CHARITIES are facing difficulties paying for humanitarian relief work in Lebanon because the public has shunned their appeals.

The British Red Cross and Unicef have managed to raise only a fraction of their multimillion-pound appeal targets, with the public and corporate donors shying away from what they consider to be a highly political conflict.

The British Red Cross has raised £400,000 during its four-week appeal, a fraction of the £10 million that it had hoped to attract.

Unicef has collected 18 per cent of its £12 million appeal target for children in Lebanon and Syria.

Mark Astarita, the director of fundraising at the British Red Cross, told The Times that the complex political issues surrounding the Middle East conflict were deterring even the most generous. “It has proved very tough indeed to raise money from the general public and, although we are usually successful with corporate donors, this has proved a very difficult appeal for them to respond to,” he said.

He believes that coverage of events as a military and diplomatic conflict has eclipsed the humanitarian crisis. More than 900,000 people — a quarter of the population — have been displaced in Lebanon, mostly within the country, where they are sheltering in schools and public buildings. The rest have fled into Syria. Yesterday thousands headed back to their homes after the ceasefire came into effect.

The poor public response is in sharp contrast to other recent British Red Cross appeals. One for the Darfur region of Sudan raised twice as much in its first four weeks, the Pakistani earthquake appeal brought in ten times as much, and the Asian tsunami a hundred times as much. After the Beslan massacre in Russia, the charity raised as much in one day as the Lebanon appeal has in a month.

The only charity to raise substantial funds is Christian Aid.

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