INTERNATIONAL

Several buses transported Syrian refugee families to Syria from different areas in Lebanon on Wednesday morning, as part of a government repatriation scheme revived earlier this month, local media reported.

Convoys from Nabatieh, Tripoli, and Arsal, in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, carried around 750 refugees to border crossings despite concerns from rights groups that the policy may have involved elements of coercion.

Repatriations are taking place through the Masnaa border crossing on the Lebanese-Syrian border in the eastern Bekaa Valley and at the al-Aboudiyeh border crossing in north Lebanon.

Lebanese authorities have maintained that the repatriations, under a revived programme run by the General Security agency, are voluntary. Last week, caretaker Minister of the Displaced Issam Charafeddine said 6,000 Syrian refugees would be repatriated on Wednesday in three separate convoys

Amnesty International had warned that returning refugees may not have accurate or complete information on the level of risk in their hometowns, meaning the returns may not be “free and informed.”

“In enthusiastically facilitating these returns, the Lebanese authorities are knowingly putting Syrian refugees at risk of suffering from heinous abuse and persecution upon their return to Syria,” Amnesty said in a statement earlier this month.

Social affairs minister Hector Hajjar, who is overseeing the repatriation process on the ground, on Wednesday denied accusations that the Lebanese state is forcing Syrians out of the country and putting them in danger.

“It is enough to see the conditions in which the refugees are leaving Lebanon, taking all their belongings, including furniture, with them,” Hajjar told Middle East Eye.

“It is enough to speak to them to understand that they have been waiting for this decision [to be implemented].”

On Tuesday, Lebanon’s General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim said in a press conference that Lebanon had opened 17 public security centres across the country to organise the voluntary return of Syrian refugees.

“The return will be voluntary, and we will not force any displaced to return; this is a principle we have established, and we seek to reduce the burden on Lebanon,” he said.

In 2018, the General Security agency launched a mechanism through which any Syrian refugee can communicate their desire to return home. Lebanon would then liaise with Syrian authorities to make sure that the individual was not wanted there.

Abbas said that 540,000 Syrians had “voluntarily returned to their country” since the General Security started implementing the plan.

That policy was put on hold with the outbreak of Covid-19, but outgoing Lebanese President Michel Aoun revived it this month and it resumed on Wednesday.

Lebanon hosts more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees who have fled more than a decade of war back home, marking the world’s highest proportion of refugees per capita in one country.

Source: Middle East Eye