Lebanon Decided To Send Back Syrian Refugees Despite HR Warnings
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Roshan Amiri
- . October 13, 2022
- . Update: October 13, 2022 6:35 pm
Despite warnings from the rights groups and the UN, Lebanon is continuing to send off Syrian refugees back to their country of origin. Transfers are set to resume next week. The pressure of keeping refugees is worrying for all nations who have been accommodating with them. However, it is a human rights issue at hand and cannot be ignored as well.
Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun has already announced that the country will start sending off Syrian refugees back home end of this week, even though rights groups and the UN have warned against it.
The only saving grace right now could be that it is going to be voluntary and not forced. Abbas Ibrahim, the head of Lebanon’s General Security agency is responsible for the country’s borders, has communicated this and also added that this movement is going to be based on a mechanism first used in 2018. He added the plan had been paused due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The movement applies to only those who had voluntarily signed up with Lebanon’s General Security agency to go back, in coordination with the country’s social affairs ministry, an official source told the news agency. Refugees would not be forced to leave. While this had been in 2018, things have changed now and should not be applicable again.
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Lebanon’s minister for displaced people, Issam Charafeddine, announced in July a plan he said would seek to return some 15,000 refugees to Syria per month, basing his move on a claim Syria had become largely safe after more than a decade of war.
The plan would not involve the United Nations, which maintains that conditions in Syria do not allow for the large-scale return of refugees.
The Lebanon office of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said it was “not facilitating or promoting the large-scale voluntary repatriation of refugees to Syria.”
In previous rounds of returns, the UNHCR had exercised a protection role, providing counselling and being present at departure points.
New York-based advocacy organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in July that, contrary to Charafeddine’s announced plans, “Syria is anything but safe for returnees.
