Just outside of the towering skyscrapers and seaside promenade of Beirut lies a small one-kilometre slum: the Shatila Refugee Camp. Established in 1949 after the Palestinian Nakba, this labyrinth of narrow alleys adorned with tangled electrical wires and makeshift-turned-permanent shelters is home to over 14,000 refugees, some families having been here for decades. Despite the bleakness of their situation, I arrived at Shatila to be greeted by a smiling Afraa Al Abdoullah, a 16-year-old refugee girl and student at the Malala-backed Alsama (“sky” in Arabic) Project school. Afraa began learning …