A woman uses artificial intelligence to deliver aid to civilians in war-torn Lebanon

Last fall, Hania Zataari, a mechanical engineer who works for Lebanon’s Ministry of Industry, put her skills to use as war raged in the country. Originally from Sidon, South Lebanon, she created a WhatsApp chatbot that made it easier to access much-needed help.

“They lost their houses, their savings, their jobs, everything they had built,” Hanya says, referring to those who were forced to leave their homes as a result of the war.

On September 23, Israel sharply stepped up its offensive against the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, with which it has been waging a conflict that has been escalating since Hezbollah attacked Israel in October 2023.

At least 492 people were killed in one of the deadliest days of Lebanon’s conflict in nearly 20 years, according to the Lebanese government.

Thousands of families fled to Sidon after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) struck 1,600 Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon.

Khanya says many displaced people sought shelter in schools and other public buildings, but many others who fled their homes were forced to rent elsewhere or stay with family members.

It was these people who did not receive direct support from the government that she wanted to help. Drawing on her programming skills, Hanya created an “aidbot” to bridge the gap between the demand and supply of aid.

Aidbot is a chatbot – a type of artificial intelligence system designed to communicate with its users online – that links to WhatsApp. It is programmed to ask simple questions about the types of care people need, as well as their names and locations.

This information is then entered into a Google spreadsheet that Hanya and her team of unpaid volunteers, made up of friends and family, have access to to distribute aid such as food, blankets, mattresses, medicine and clothing.

Hania used her free time to create a bot using the website Callbell.eu, which is commonly used by companies to interact with customers on Meta platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger.

She explains that the bot, which is still in use today, makes aid distribution more efficient by reducing the time she spends responding to requests for help via WhatsApp.

“I’m not really interested in knowing their names. I just need to know where they are so I can manage the delivery,” she says.

Take, for example, a request for baby formula. Hania says the bot will ask for the child’s age and the amount needed so she and her team can provide it.

The project, she said, is financed by donations from Lebanese living abroad. She created a public dashboard to record what the project spent money on and how much aid she and her team distributed.

At the time of writing, they have delivered 78 food parcels to families of 5 or 10, 900 mattresses and 323 blankets across Sidon and other parts of Lebanon.

Khaldoun Abbas, 47, and his family fled their home in Najariya last October after receiving a call from the IDF urging them to leave for their own safety.

Seventeen people, aged between nine and 78, were sleeping under one roof in a rented three-bedroom flat in Sidon.

Khaldoon says he, his wife and children, and his brother’s family slept on mattresses they requested with aidbot in the hallway of the apartment. They also asked for blankets, food and cleaning products.

Unlike his neighbors, he could not return to his home. It was destroyed in a confirmed Israeli strike 11 days later. The Israel Defense Forces told the BBC it had “struck a terrorist infrastructure”.

When we put this allegation to Khaldun, he denied any connection with Hizballah or any other party.

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

Sidon has a longstanding reputation as an organization that hosts internally displaced persons driven from their homes along the Lebanese-Israeli border.

The latest conflict began in October 2023 after the war between Israel and Hamas spilled over into Lebanon, when Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, fired rockets into Israel in support of Gaza.

The Lebanese Ministry of Health reports that nearly 4,000 people have been killed and more than a million displaced. The ministry does not say how many of them are civilians and combatants.

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

Last November, Israel and Lebanon agreed on a ceasefire. Despite some skirmishes, it was mostly preserved. But people on the ground say aid has not improved.

International NGO Islamic Relief told the BBC that “conflict, destruction and evacuation orders have caused continuous displacement in Lebanon, making it difficult to assess and meet the needs of the population amid a changing situation.”

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

Bilal Meri, a volunteer working with Hania, says many of the challenges they face are related to the “high demand but lack” of aid.

He attributes this to the deep economic turmoil that has engulfed the country since 2019, meaning that the Lebanese government has had to rely heavily on financing goods from creditors and aid organizations.

But even NGOs feel the crisis. UNICEF Lebanon says that with only 20% of the funding it needs, it “continues to face a huge funding gap”, meaning the charity is unable to support families when they need it most.

Can this helpful bot make a tangible difference in a country wracked by financial problems and war?

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

He says the cultural context in which it is used is commendable. That is, with knowledge of “the channels people use to talk to and meet each other in their native language.”

However, he is unsure of its scalability, as what works in Lebanon is not so easily replicated in other parts of the world.

“More often than not, technology offers standard cookie cutters.

“It’s local designers, local translators, trusted interlocutors, and elements of this system that make digital tools useful,” he says.

Aidbot may not be able to offer a solution to all of Lebanon’s problems, but it has made life a little easier for the families who use it.

Additional reporting by Ahmed Abdullah