It is the second convoy in less than two weeks: it transports at least 330 people who have left Bekaa to go to the Qalamoun region. In the country of the cedars, the question of the refugees generates political confrontations in the internal sphere. The government wants to speed up “massive” returns, but the international community and the UN are preventing it.
Beirut () – Hundreds of Syrians who were settled in the eastern sector of Lebanon were repatriated over the weekend, as part of the policy of “voluntary returns” promoted by Beirut to alleviate the pressure of the refugees on a nation already collapsed by the political, economic and institutional crisis. This is the second convoy in less than two weeks, which confirms the government’s intentions to continue the “massive” return of those who fled the conflict in the last decade. National News Agency reports that at least 330 people left the Bekaa Valley, heading for the western Syrian region of Qalamoun, which borders Lebanon. In the past, this area was one of the places where the worst atrocities of the war were committed.
Earlier, on October 26, some 500 Syrian refugees, the first to return to their country of origin in the last two years, had returned voluntarily. After a long time living in Lebanon, many considered returning due to the enormous difficulties that the country of cedars is going through, where almost three quarters of the population lives in poverty.
A part of the Lebanese ruling class has tried to attribute the current emergency situation to the issue of refugees (Syrians, Palestinians, etc.). The reality is that the causes lie in many other areas, beginning with widespread corruption and the many opposing tensions that paralyze institutions. At the same time, however, it should be noted that Lebanon has hosted more than a million Syrian refugees in recent years, although the real figure could be much higher. The UN refugee agency officially registered some 825,000, but stopped counting them in 2015 at the request of Beirut authorities. At the beginning of the year, the government proposed a plan that called for the return of at least 15,000 refugees a month, but it was never carried out.
The returnees represent only a small fraction of the huge refugee population that remains in Lebanon. And this is, in part, because the United Nations maintains that Syria remains unsafe to carry out a mass repatriation – which is partly true. Returning refugees “have received guarantees and assurances from the Lebanese and Syrian authorities” before leaving, Lebanese Social Affairs Minister Hector Hajjar told reporters during a visit to the border area with Syria in recent days. . He added that the international community should encourage such returns or at least show “neutrality” on the issue.
Round trips have been discontinued in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. At that time, some 21,000 refugees had returned to their country of origin – a drop in the ocean of the emergency. According to sources from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), at least 76,500 Syrian refugees have voluntarily returned from Lebanon since 2016, some on trips organized by the Beirut government and many others on their own initiative and through their own means. The Syrian conflict, which began in March 2011, has claimed the lives of nearly half a million people and devastated the economy of a nation of almost 23 million people. Furthermore, it has displaced almost half of the population (internally displaced persons or expatriates) compared to the pre-war situation.
