From Elia J Ayoub
Last month, the European Union (EU) unveiled a 1 billion-euro ($1.07bn) aid package for the Lebanese state. During a visit to Beirut, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared that the EU seeks “to contribute to Lebanon’s socioeconomic stability”.
The funds will go towards strengthening basic services, enacting financial reforms, supporting Lebanese security forces and managing migration, she said.
Anyone who has been paying attention to the abuses committed by, or with the direct knowledge of, the EU’s border agency Frontex against desperate refugees and migrants seeking to enter the union would have cause for concern. Sea-Watch, a search and rescue organisation operating in the Mediterranean Sea, described the deal as “another cash-for-border-violence deal” wherein Europe is “exchanging money for border violence and death”.
Indeed, the EU’s financial support will encourage the criminalisation of people on the move and undoubtedly result in more suffering for refugees, especially Syrians, who are already facing abuse and misery in Lebanon. But this money will also undermine any efforts and any hopes of the Lebanese people to rid themselves of a corrupt and deeply dysfunctional political elite.
Endangering Syrian refugees in Lebanon
The announcement of the EU aid package for Lebanon comes on the tail of similar deals aimed at “tackling migration” with other countries in the region. In the past year, Egypt, Tunisia and Mauritania have all received large amounts of EU funds in exchange for cracking down on people trying to cross into Europe.
Libya, which has received financial support from Brussels for years, has seen some of the worst abuses. In March 2023, a United Nations fact-finding mission declared that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that migrants” in Libya, including those forced back through the EU-Libya deals, are “victims of crimes against humanity and […] acts of murder, enforced disappearance, torture, enslavement, sexual violence, rape and other inhumane acts”.
There is growing concern among human rights organisations and activists that Lebanon will be heading in the same direction of heightened abuse of refugees.
In Lebanon, the situation was already worsening before the deal, as the uptick in the number of boats leaving Lebanese shores shows. The UN has verified that at least 59 boats departed from Lebanon in the first four months of 2024, compared with three boats in the same period last year. The Cedar Centre for Legal Studies (CCLS) put the number of boats at about 100 in 2023.
Many of those attempting the dangerous journey are Syrian refugees, but there are also Lebanese citizens who are desperately trying to escape a collapsed economy and almost non-existent social provision.
In the past, Lebanese authorities used to turn a blind eye to these departures, but in recent years, they have increasingly cooperated with push-backs under EU pressure. According to local human rights organisations, Lebanon and Cyprus have had a “non-public agreement” to coordinate efforts to return refugees and migrants to Lebanon after they reach Cyprus. But the Lebanese authorities have also engaged in violent border patrolling.
In April 2022, the Lebanese navy deliberately sank a boat carrying dozens of Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian nationals. According to witness testimony collected by Megaphone news, the CCLS and Febrayer Network’s Investigative Lab, a navy vessel rammed the boat and then moved away, while it sank and people drowned. Seven bodies were found, including a 40-day-old baby, while 33 people remain missing to this day. Forty-five survived.
Syrian refugees in Lebanon are particularly vulnerable to an intensified crackdown by the authorities.
For years, they have been facing daily acts of violence from state and para-state actors, with major parties – from the Lebanese Forces and the Free Patriotic Movement to Hezbollah – routinely dehumanising them in their rhetoric.
In addition, the Lebanese authorities have been forcibly deporting Syrian refugees, including opposition activists and army defectors who are at immediate risk of torture and death at the hands of the Syrian regime. Human rights organisations have repeatedly made clear in reports that Syria is not a safe country to return refugees to. The Syrian regime has killed so many detainees that it has amounted to, in the UN’s own words, the “extermination” of the civilian population.
More recently, the UN Syria commission of inquiry described Syria as an “abyss” where a “plunging war economy and a devastating humanitarian crisis are inflicting new levels of hardship and suffering on [the] Syrian civilian population”. –FP
