Beirut puts pressure on the EU: Syrians, from political refugees to economic migrants

Lebanon considers it ‘imperative’ that the Syrian refugees in the country, at least 1.5 million, be repatriated. The change of leadership in Damascus also changes their status. At the meeting of donor countries organised by the EU, the Foreign Minister calls for ‘stopping crisis management and starting to resolve the crisis’, starting with the sanctions that must be cancelled.

Beirut (AsiaNews) - The situation in Syria has changed radically since the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad. With the stabilisation of the new Syrian leadership led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa, political refugees in Lebanon have become economic migrants. This is the gist of the arguments presented by the Lebanese Foreign Minister Joe Raggi at the Syria Donors Conference organised in recent days in Brussels by the European Union (EU).

‘Today there is no legal justification for keeping Syrian refugees in Lebanon. The displaced are no longer fleeing war or persecution, but have become economic migrants,’ said the head of diplomacy in Beirut, in front of an audience that included, for the first time, the new Syrian interim Foreign Minister Assaad al-Shibani. ‘We agree that it no longer makes sense to finance economic migrants in Lebanon,’ he continued, emphasising the “burden” that these refugees represent for the infrastructure and education system of the country of the cedars.

Until now, the compensation paid by the European Union to Syrian refugees in Lebanon was suspended as soon as they returned to Syria. However, according to Beirut, this policy, aimed at punishing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, is no longer justified.

Lasting solutions

‘Their return requires decisive changes of course that will lead to lasting solutions,’ added Foreign Minister Raggi, hoping that the conference will be ’the moment when we stop managing the crisis and start solving it.’ We know that 70% of Syrians live below the poverty line and the Syrian refugee contingent is one of the largest in the world.

According to estimates by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there were almost one million Syrian refugees in the Land of the Cedars before the fall of Bashar al-Assad on 8 December 2019. This figure is disputed by the Lebanese General Security, which puts the number at 1.5 million. At the height of the crisis that erupted with the 2011 civil war, Syrian refugees represented about a quarter of the population according to the Lebanese authorities. From 2015 onwards, Beirut has registered more than 40,000 births of Syrian children every year, a number almost equal to that of births of Lebanese children.

It goes without saying that the figure of 1.5 million Syrians recorded by the UNHCR does not include Syrian workers in key sectors of the economy (construction, agriculture, catering, hotels), who have valid work permits. To these are added the homeowners in possession of so-called ‘residence permits of convenience’. According to the latest UN statistics, more than 300,000 refugees have already returned to Syria. However, this figure does not show in detail the countries from which the flow of returnees originates, mainly Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.

The Red Cross warning

Mirjana Spoljaric, Swiss diplomat and president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), realising that this is an historic opportunity not to be missed, recently issued a warning from Brussels. The inability to help Syria ‘get back on its feet’, she emphasises in an interview with AFP, will lead to a new wave of migration out of the country.

‘When you don't have schools for your children, when you don't have functioning hospitals, when you don't have access to water and electricity, when your house has collapsed and you don't have the means to rebuild it, you will be forced to leave,’ said the ICRC expert. Moreover, according to the International Rescue Committee, 81% of Syrian electrical networks, 61% of water networks and almost 50% of healthcare infrastructures have been destroyed due to the conflict.

Immediate action

Based on a survey by the UNHCR, the Lebanese Foreign Minister emphasised that around 355,000 Syrians ‘say they are ready to return from Lebanon in the next twelve months, provided they receive financial and material support’. He added that it is imperative ‘not only to support their return, but also their reintegration in Syria's reconstruction efforts’. To this end, he called for the lifting of sanctions on key sectors in Syria, to ‘move from immediate recovery to full reconstruction’.

In Brussels, the European Union has committed to providing Syria with almost 5.8 billion euros over two years to facilitate its recovery; however, the sum represents little more than a pittance for a country in which Americans, Turks, Iranians, French, Russians and Israelis, not to mention Islamic groups, have fought at one time or another. All this is in addition to the losses due to the economic sanctions imposed by the US-branded Caesar Act. Since the beginning of the year, Qatar, the European Union and Canada have announced the partial lifting of some of the sanctions affecting key economic sectors in Syria, such as food and energy. Finally, referring to the arrival last week of over 13,000 new refugees fleeing the massacres of Alawite civilians in the coastal cities of Latakia and Tartous, Joe Raggi explained that ‘this does not mean that we have to agree to replace one refugee with another’.

The housing crisis in Lebanon has worsened considerably since the war between Israel and Hezbollah (2006-2008) and Israel's destruction of about 70 villages in southern Lebanon, rendering them uninhabitable. The Foreign Minister, who met his Syrian counterpart, finally thanked the UNHCR, the United Nations agencies, the EU and international partners (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, South Korea and the Gulf States) for their assistance. In conclusion, the head of diplomacy in Beirut extended an official invitation to visit Lebanon to Kaja Kallas, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission.