 I'm third speaker, Rayat Sharavideen. I know Rayat for so many years. He was with us at the board of the Arab Monetary Fund. Rayat is, he was a central and commercial banker. He was former first vice governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon. I'm always proud of having him as a good friend. And I know he has depth in the way he look at things and in terms of strategy, strategic thinking. And Rayat will have his opening remarks and the socioeconomic impact with the displaced population, a crisis on countries in the region. And he will take Lebanon as a case. I think this is a very difficult issue for several countries in our region. It is sensitive, it is difficult, it is whenever you speak about it, it becomes so, you know, and one guy said, you know, emotional also and as we have heard him in his, the last session. Please, Rayat. Thank you, Dr. Hamidi. It's great to be here with you again in one of those beautiful sessions that you run. The, as Dr. Hamidi has said, I was asked to talk about the socioeconomic impact of the Syrian displaced population, a crisis on Lebanon. In the introduction, I would say that the issue of the Syrians, the space in Lebanon, evolved from a purely humanitarian one when the war broke out in 2011 to a massive call for a swift plan of action to repatriate them as they constitute an existential quote unquote threat to Lebanon's, again quote identity, image and future. And I'm quoting the minister of the interior. Like Germany's 2014 versus 2018 reversing sentiments, populists rhetoric in Lebanon is recently echoing calls for self-protection, controlling measures against their movement in and even against their residential arrangements by heads of municipalities, governors and the minister of the interior. Excuse me, while others went all the way to facilitate their immigration by sea to Europe. Additionally, there are demands to review the modus operandi of the UNHCR, which is the United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugees. And the other relevant NGOs and even terminate their operations altogether, especially with the unfulfilled financial pledges of the international community and the European Union's strong stance on the premature quote unquote return of the Syrians to Lebanon. This is compounded by the disputes among the cabinet members of Lebanon of the caretaker government in Lebanon, which prevents it from convening and addressing this issue. While thousands of Syrians are infiltrating the northern and eastern common borders between Lebanon and Syria. To give you an idea, this is the map of Lebanon. And we have the northern, this is Syria from the northern borders and from the eastern borders. So we have about 387 kilometers of common borders. So this is really, that means I will get to some statistics later on while I'll be talking. So the Lebanese army arrested 25,000 Syrians during the first eight months of the year. While the conflict has abated in Syria where a regime is recapturing more curable health areas and where most Arab countries started the process of approaching the administration, the economic pressures there are mounting and pushing more citizens to flee the country into Lebanon. Benefiting from the United Nations, current policy of offering them $300 per person monthly. Against this backdrop, let's look at the Lebanese economic or macro-social economic scene. Actually, we have been facing ourselves as stressful conditions resulting from multi-dimensional crisis that has been going through and aggravated by regional and global economic turbulences. Lebanon's crisis emerged from a decade of regional turmoil on the one hand, particularly regarding the repercussions and risks of the searing crisis and the difficulties in public finances in terms of the budget deficit and the exacerbation of public debt and its service on the other hand. In the Q&A, if there's any Q&A, I'll get to some numbers and statistics while I'll skip that for now. But the inflationary and monetary financial factors that are really pressured Lebanon more and more, the exchange rate devaluation, the imbalance in the balance of payment, the government's dumb decision to discontinue payments on all its outstanding U.S. dollar-denominated euro bonds on March 9, 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic consequences and the Bay Root Port explosion factor of August 2nd, 2020, the energy crisis, the fuel and economic effects and on and on and on has really put us in shambles that is aggravated again with the presidential vacuum since little over a year, since October 30th, 2020. I'll get the statistics if there's any interest about it. Let's look at the numbers of the searing in Lebanon and how much they constitute as percentage of the Lebanese population. And here comes the interesting part. We don't really know for sure how much they are. We have statistics and we have statistics and we have statistics. So we have statistics running for about 900,000 and we have statistics going to 2,080,000. So look at that range and I'll talk a little bit about this variation in numbers. Because the registered population of the UNHCR and they are not registered population and there's the general security at the number that I will talk about here is the official number that the Lebanese general security, general director of the general security had talked about which is 2,080,000. This is 30% of Lebanese. So they constitute 30% of the Lebanese population. In addition to the new waves actually coming into Lebanon and we'll see all kinds of videos of them coming in and hurts. Well, the unofficial estimates indicate that the number of newly displaced people between June and July this year reached 15,000 per month with a total population of 6.77 and this is, if we don't really know how much we are, how many people you are. So we had 6.77 million according to the World Bank estimates and 7.3 million people in habitants according to official estimates. So this is what we have. Lebanon hosts the highest per capita concentration of refugees in the world. And definitely as you well know we're in addition to the Syrian brothers, we have the Palestinian brothers who still have about 300,000 Palestinians but the Palestinians are considered refugees. So that's for legal issues. The Syrians are not considered refugees, are considered displaced. And I have here some, a table talks about the percentages of how much they constitute in our neighboring area. For example, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon. And actually in Turkey they constitute 3.8. In Jordan they constitute 5.9. In Egypt they constitute 0.14 while in Lebanon they constitute 36%. And based on the numbers I took, I just played with some numbers and in case they continue with their birth rate that they have which is more than the Lebanese birth rate, actually we will be equal by 2043. In 20 years the Lebanese and Syrian population will be equal in Lebanon. Definitely the, as with the impact, just consider that the country is in shambles already. We are in deep political, social and economic problems. Not much infrastructure is built and let alone, maintained let alone built. So all the pressures are, we have those, the guests of ours are using exact same roads, exact same electricity grid, exact same hospitals and x-rays and what have you, transportation. So the education, communication, water and sanitation requirements. So when the same thing that hasn't, not much has been done on this infrastructure over the past several years. The word bank estimates, a report estimates that the economic losses caused by the Syrian conflict in terms of lower GDP is more than $1.1 billion in 2012. Nearly $2.5 billion in 2013 and up to $3.9 billion in 2014. Actually based on the Lebanese central bank, it is about $4.5 billion annually. So recurring. According to the estimates by the Ministry of Finance, between 2011 and 2018, the cost of the seeding crisis inflicted on Lebanon amounted to $46.5 billion. And as we have said, it's concentrated mostly in the sectors of health, education, energy, water, agriculture and the environment in terms of solid waste, sanitation and others. Some more, I skipped the statistics and tell you where they are concentrated because of the proximity as you would expect they are concentrated mostly in the East, like 36% in the Eastern part of Lebanon. In the North, there are 25%, which is next to Syria. In the Beirut and Mount Lebanon, we call it 27% and there are less so in the Southern part of Lebanon, which is 12%. In conclusion, in the speech before the United Nations General Assembly 10 years ago, delivered by the former High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, the current Secretary General of the United Nations, he stated, and I'm quoting here, the burden of refugees on a small country like Lebanon is equivalent to the influx of about 15 million refugees to France. More than 32 millions to Russia and more than 71 millions to the United States. Well, this was 10 years ago. If we have to extrapolate, take exact same numbers that he has talked. So now it's about 27 million refugees in France, 61 million refugees in Russia and 140 million refugees in the United States. Well, certainly there are some positive implications about the Syrian presence in Lebanon in terms of labor market. And we can definitely capitalize on it. And this is something, one of the ideas that I've talked about in the United Nations personnel several years ago, but our government was not interested at that time. This was about 2016. Unfortunately, they want to pressure the Syrians just like they pressured the Palestinians. They want to make their life looks like hell so that they will just leave as much as possible and as soon as possible. So they were, our government of 2016 was not ready to accommodate any of the ideas that we have talked about for Lebanon to take advantage of them. And for really, which is in the best interest of our community and theirs. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ray. So much, and we have to go to the Lebanese, to your education and your skills of the Lebanese. You are everywhere in our region participating. Also the vibrant private sector, even though all those difficulties you go to Lebanon and as if the private sector is, and as if it were isolated, which is not isolated, but it's very vibrant.