In Beirut camp, Palestinian women learn jiu-jitsu and confidence

Inside the makeshift gym

In Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp in Beirut, a makeshift gym has become more than a place to sweat. It is where Palestinian women are finishing a two-month course in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a class that gives them room to test their bodies and their confidence inside a camp shaped by displacement, poverty, and daily restriction.

The setting matters because the women training here are not stepping into a neutral space. Many were born in one of Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps to families who fled or were forced from their homes in 1948 and were never allowed back. That history is not background noise. It still defines who gets to move freely, who feels safe, and who can claim a public presence in a camp where space is tight and autonomy is limited.

Why the camp context is inseparable from the class

UNRWA estimates that about 248,000 Palestine refugees and their family members access its services in Lebanon, and it says 45% of Palestine refugees are estimated to live in the country’s 12 refugee camps. In February 2025, the agency’s Lebanon field office reported that 222,000 Palestinians were residing in Lebanon, including 195,000 Palestinians from Lebanon and 27,000 Palestinians from Syria. Those figures show how central the camp system remains to Palestinian life in Lebanon, even after decades of exile.

Burj al-Barajneh is only one part of that landscape, alongside camps such as Ein El Hilweh, Shatila, and Rashidieh. These places are marked by overcrowding, poverty, and restrictions that make ordinary life harder to plan and harder to control. In that environment, a martial arts class is not a luxury activity. It becomes a small but meaningful claim to personal space.

What jiu-jitsu changes, and what it cannot

For women like Malak and Hanan, the appeal of Brazilian jiu-jitsu is not just physical defense. It is the chance to practice calm under pressure, to occupy space without apology, and to build a sense of self in a setting that often tells refugee women to stay small. The class offers a structured way to convert discipline into confidence, one repetition at a time.

But the deeper value of the course is that it creates a social space where women gather on their own terms. In a male-dominated camp environment, that matters as much as any technique taught on the mat. The women are learning to trust their bodies in a community where movement is often monitored by fear, custom, and scarcity.

Still, the class does not erase the broader limits on their lives. It offers a corridor of agency inside a system that continues to constrain them. That distinction is essential, because the empowerment here is real without being complete.

The risks that remain beyond the gym

UNRWA and UNHCR protection reporting has documented fear of theft, robbery, and movement restrictions affecting Palestinian refugees in camps, including inside and around camp areas. UNHCR also says displaced women and girls face heightened risks of gender-based violence. Those are not abstract concerns for women in Burj al-Barajneh. They shape when someone leaves home, how far she can travel, and whether public space feels usable at all.

This is why the jiu-jitsu class resonates beyond fitness. It is happening in a world where women’s mobility is constrained not only by camp infrastructure, but by insecurity itself. Learning how to move with control can feel like a practical answer to a real threat, yet the threat remains. The class may build confidence, but it does not remove the risks that produced the need for confidence in the first place.

A wider struggle for dignity

The deeper story is not that training makes the camp’s hardship disappear. It is that refugee women are carving out autonomy inside conditions designed to limit it. In a place defined by displacement since 1948, by overcrowding, and by continuing insecurity, even a small gym can become a site of resistance to resignation.

That is what makes the course in Burj al-Barajneh so striking. It shows how Palestinian women are using a martial arts class to claim dignity, mobility, and presence in a setting that still denies all three in full. The lesson is bigger than self-defense: in a camp shaped by exclusion, confidence itself becomes a form of defiance.