The woman using AI to bring aid to civilians in war-torn Lebanon

Last fall, Hania Zataari, an engineer who works for the Ministry of Industry in Lebanon, put her skills to work as war raged in the country. From Sidon, South Lebanon, he created a chatbot on WhatsApp that helps to get the most important help.

“They lost their homes, their savings, their jobs, everything they had built,” Hania says, referring to people forced from their homes by the war.

On September 23, Israel escalated its offensive against the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which it has been fighting since Hezbollah attacked Israel in October 2023.

According to the Lebanese government, at least 492 people were killed in one day of the deadliest fighting in Lebanon in almost 20 years.

Thousands of families have fled to Sidon after the Israeli army (IDF) hit what it said were 1,600 Hezbollah positions inside Lebanon.

Hania says many refugees sought accommodation in schools and other government buildings, but many others were forced to rent elsewhere or stay with relatives.

It is these people who were not receiving direct assistance from the government that he wanted to help. Using her programming skills, Hania created an “aidbot” to bridge the gap between need and service delivery.

Aidbot is a chatbot – a type of AI machine designed to interact with users online – that interacts with WhatsApp. It is designed to ask simple questions about the types of support people need along with their names and locations.

This information is recorded on a Google spreadsheet that Hania and her group of unpaid volunteers, made up of friends and family, have the opportunity to provide assistance such as food, blankets, mattresses, medicine and clothing.

Hania used her spare time to create a bot using the website Callbell.eu, which is widely used by businesses to engage with customers on Meta platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook messenger.

He explains that the bot, which is still in use today, makes distribution more efficient because it cuts down on the time spent responding to help requests on WhatsApp.

“I don’t want to know their names, I just need to know where they are so I can manage,” he says.

For example, consider a request for infant formula. Hania says the bot will ask the child’s age and the amount needed for her and her team to donate.

The project, he says, is supported by donations from the Lebanese diaspora. He has created a public board to record the project’s costs and the amount of support he and his team have distributed.

At the time of writing this letter they have given 78 food packages to families of 5 or 10 people, 900 mattresses, and 323 blankets across Sidon and other parts of Lebanon.

Last October, 47-year-old Khaldoun Abbas and his family fled their home in Najjarieh after receiving calls from the IDF urging them to leave for their own safety.

17 people, aged between 9 and 78, were sleeping under one roof in a three-bed rented house in Sidon.

Khaldoun says that he, his wife and children, as well as his brother’s family, sleep on a mattress he requested using an aidbot in the hallway of the house. They also asked for blankets, food and cleaning supplies.

Unlike his neighbors, he was unable to return to his home. It was destroyed in a confirmed Israeli airstrike 11 days later. The IDF told the BBC that it “affected terrorists”.

When we told this to Khaldoun, he denied having an alliance with Hezbollah or any other group.

“This is not the first time that Sidon has opened its doors to refugees,” explains Hania, referring to the wave of people who have arrived in the city.

Sidon has a long history of hosting refugees who were driven from their homes on the Lebanese-Israeli border.

The most recent conflict began in October 2023 after the war between Israel and Hamas spread to Lebanon when Hezbollah, an affiliate of Hamas, fired rockets into Israel in support of Gaza.

Lebanon’s health ministry says nearly 4,000 people have been killed and more than a million displaced. The ministry did not say how many were civilians or combatants.

In Israel, about 60,000 people have been evacuated from northern Israel and officials say more than 80 soldiers and 47 civilians have been killed.

In November, the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Lebanon expired. Although some arguments have been held. But the people on the ground said that the aid did not go well.

International NGO Islamic Relief told the BBC that “conflicts, destruction, and displacement have led to displacement in Lebanon which has made it difficult to assess and respond to people’s needs as the situation changes.”

But it is not only the war that is preventing the distribution of aid.

Bilal Merie, a volunteer working with Hania says that many of the problems they face are due to the “high demand but lack” of help.

He describes the economic crisis that has affected the country since 2019, meaning that the Lebanese government has had to rely heavily on money from creditors and aid agencies.

But even NGOs are facing problems. Unicef ​​Lebanon says that with only 20% of the funds it needs, it “continues to face a serious financial crisis,” meaning the charity cannot help families when they need it most.

In a world plagued by economic crisis and war, can this aidbot make a real difference?

This is the first time that researcher John Bryant from the think tank Overseas Development Institute has heard of a chatbot being used in this way in the humanitarian sector.

He says the culture used is commendable. That is, knowing “the ways people are using to communicate and meet them in their own language”.

However, he is not sure about the risks, because what works in Lebanon cannot be compared in other parts of the world.

“What technology often provides is a very common cookie-cutter approach.

“It’s the local editors, the local translators, the trusted communicators and the things within the system that elevate the digital tools to usefulness,” he says.

Aidbot cannot provide a solution to all of Lebanon’s problems, but for the families who use it, it has made life easier.

Additional reporting by Ahmed Abdallah