Le ministre des déplacés Sharaf al Din se rend aujourd’hui en Syrie pour rencontrer différents responsables syriens dont le ministre de l’administration locale et le ministre de l’intérieur. Pour rappel, les autorités libanaises souhaitent le retour de 15 000 réfugiés syriens présents au Liban par mois.
Quatre comités conjoints devraient être ainsi constitués selon la proposition libanaise. Le Liban conditionne toutefois ce retour à la mise en place par la Syrie des infrastructures nécessaires, comme des centres d’hébergement, la réhabilitation des routes, des infrastructures d’eau potables, ou des hôpitaux et des écoles.
Le ministre libanais rappelle que Damas a publié plusieurs décrets assurant une immunité aux réfugiés syriens présents à l’étranger, “y compris des exemptions et la possibilité de reprendre leur travail, l’annulation de la saisie conservatoire de leurs biens et d’autres décisions pour faciliter le retour.”.
271 030 réfugiés sont déjà ainsi revenus dans leur pays.
Focus
Lebanon ranks 2nd among the countries that host the most Syrian refugees in proportion to the local population, (High Commissioner for Refugees entitled Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2019). The country of cedars also has a large community of Palestinian refugees whose presence was at the origin of the civil war from 1975 to 1990.
According to the High Commissioner for Refugees, Lebanon had 916,156 Syrian refugees on its soil at the end of 2019, compared to 949,666 a year earlier. 910,600 refugees are believed to be of Syrian origin.
As a reminder, a report prepared by the Ministry of Finance and the United Nations Development Program in 2020 on the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on the Lebanese economy between 2011 and 2018 estimated the cost of the presence of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, impacting all sectors, including education and electricity, but also causing a fall in the Gross Domestic Product while Lebanon was impacted by a serious economic crisis that emerged in broad daylight in 2019 and characterized by a rapid deterioration of the parity between the Lebanese pound and the dollar. Thus, the national currency lost more than 90% of its value against the greenback. 82% of the Lebanese population would now live below the poverty line and 36% in a state of extreme poverty, leading to tensions with Syrian refugees.
However, some political parties have so far refused to discuss the return of Syrian refugees by refusing to discuss the necessary procedures with Damascus, even if the Lebanese authorities have endorsed a plan to promote this return in 2020.
Faced with the deterioration of social and economic conditions, some Syrian but also Palestinian refugees and even Lebanese nationals are trying to exodus to Europe, in particular via boat people bound for Cyprus. Several boats have been intercepted in recent months.
