Bou Habib warns refugee conference that Lebanon has reached 'point of no return'
Caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib has warned the annual international conference on Syrian refugees in Brussels that Lebanon has “reached the point of no return” in its Syrian refugee crisis.
“We have reached the point of no return due to the increase of incidents, disturbances, skirmishes, thefts, crimes and organized crime gangs, the tools of which are largely displaced Syrians, which has united the Lebanese over rejecting the ‘business as usual or more of the same’ policy,” Bou Habib told the conferees.
“We have reached Lebanese unanimity over the fact that keeping the situation as it is will represent an existential threat to Lebanon,” the minister added.
He accordingly said that the government will communicate with the international and regional sides and the relevant parties to “devise a detailed timeframe for returning the refugees.”
Bou Habib also stressed that “the refugee return should not be linked to the political solution” in Syria, warning that “when Lebanon gets infected with the flu, and falls despite our will, with its residents, people and the displaced, Europe will get the infection, and we will all turn into victims.”
Lebanon’s parliament convened on May 16 and approved a binding recommendation aimed at “returning the illegal Syrian migrants and residents in Lebanon to their country within a year at the latest.”
To this end, the legislature recommended that the government form a ministerial committee to “communicate and directly and strenuously follow up with the international and regional sides and the various bodies, especially with the Syrian government, and to devise a detailed timeframe for repatriating the displaced (Syrians), except for special cases protected by the Lebanese laws and specified by the committee.”
The government was also requested to compel the U.N. Refugee Agency to “submit the statistics and files related to the displaced that are in its possession” and to “coordinate with its office in Syria to facilitate their return to their country.”
The government should “call on the international community and donor bodies to help the government by offering the necessary assets to the military and security agencies in order to control the land border,” the recommendation added.
“All U.N. agencies, especially the Refugee Agency and the international and European donor bodies should be asked to pay incentives and offer financial and humanitarian aid aimed at encouraging the return of the displaced to their country,” the recommendation says.
“Lebanon can no longer bear the burden of the presence of the displaced, and it anyhow cannot be a border police for any country,” the recommendation adds, while asking the government to “submit a report to parliament every three months about the implementation phases.”
In recent weeks, lawmakers from the entire political spectrum ramped up anti-refugee sentiment and called for more refugee returns and crackdowns.
The European Union this month announced an aid package worth 1 billion euros — about $1.06 billion — of which about 200 million euros would go to security and border control, in an apparent bid to curb migration from Lebanon to Cyprus, Italy, and other parts of Europe.
While caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has welcomed the aid, other officials described it as a bribe for tiny Lebanon to keep the refugees.
A country of about 6 million people, Lebanon hosts nearly 780,000 registered Syrian refugees and hundreds of thousands who are unregistered — the world’s highest refugee population per capita.
Lebanese officials have long urged the international community to either resettle the refugees in other countries or help them return to Syria. Over the past months, leading Lebanese political parties have become increasingly vocal, demanding that Syrian refugees go back.
Lebanese security forces this year stepped up deportations of Syrians, although nowhere near the level threatened two years ago when the Lebanese government announced a plan to deport some 15,000 Syrians every month, to what they dubbed “safe areas,” in cooperation with the government in Damascus.
Many increasingly impoverished Lebanese have accused Syrian refugees of benefiting from humanitarian aid while beating Lebanese to jobs by accepting lower pay.
Lebanon’s ruling political parties and leadership claim that most Syrians living in the tiny Mediterranean country are economic migrants rather than refugees escaping the war at home, now in its 13th year.
Lebanese security agents have in the past weeks raided shops and other businesses employing undocumented Syrian workers, and shut them down.
Source: Naharnet
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