Report: The EU is financing crimes against Syrian refugees

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The war between Hezbollah and Israel that has been going on for almost a year has forcibly taken away the spotlight from issues that are just as urgent and important, such as the political and financial crisis and the decades-old issue of Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

A report released last Wednesday by Human Rights Watch documents the fact that Lebanese and Cypriot authorities are collaborating to prevent Syrian refugees from reaching Europe by deporting them to Syria, without any guarantee that their human rights would be respected, putting their lives in danger once more. For example, refugees intercepted by the Cypriot coast guard are sent to Lebanon and from there are immediately deported to Syria by the Lebanese armed forces.

The report also points to the European Union's complicity in human rights violations through its financial support for the Lebanese security forces. After the EU's recent allocation of €1 billion to Lebanon for border management, the report stresses the urgent need to ensure that EU funds do not contribute to violations of international law.

The ongoing financial crisis that has brought Lebanon to its knees since 2019 has accelerated the trend of people leaving on makeshift boats for the lesser-known but heavily used Balkan route (Lebanon-Cyprus-Turkey or Greece-Balkans): mostly Syrians, but also Lebanese from the lower social classes, especially from the provinces of Tripoli and Akkar in the country’s impoverished north.

Since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, nearly two million Syrians have poured into Lebanon (according to official UN data alone, which stopped recording entries in 2017 and does not count new births or irregular entries), compared to a population of about four million Lebanese, in a territory of 10 square kilometers (the size of Abruzzo). Likewise important to mention is the presence of half a million Palestinians in 12 refugee camps. Lebanon has thus become one of the countries with the highest proportion of immigrants in the world in absolute terms.

This is the backdrop for the conclusions of the HRW report. As Nadia Hardman, a researcher for HRW's Refugee and Migrant Rights Division and the report’s author, explained to il manifesto, “we would like to make it known that the European Community is both underestimating human rights violations and also financing them in certain ways. Obviously not directly, but given the documented facts, it is impossible not to know about the summary deportations and the misuse of violence, the abuses committed by the Lebanese and Cypriot authorities, which are funded precisely in order to deal with the phenomenon of Syrian migration in Lebanon and the Mediterranean.” 

She adds: ”Our investigation is a follow-the-money one. What is immediately striking is that there has been no conditionality, and there still isn’t any, on the great amount of funds that have arrived since 2020, and which, as we have learned, will be doubled in 2025. So there are no consequences for the violations; instead, one might even say that they are being rewarded.”

A new crackdown on Syrian immigrants crossing irregularly in Lebanon has been underway for several months, and anti-Syrian rhetoric has increased in the country, fomented mainly by Christian right-wing groups such as Kataeb and the Lebanese Forces.

Meanwhile, the war to the south is not stopping. Last Wednesday night, a woman was killed by Israeli shelling in Qabrikha, a suburb of Marjayouneh; two people were wounded, including a 12-year-old boy. UNIFIL (the UN mission on the border) has repeatedly asked Israel to avoid hitting civilian positions, without success, just as it has unsuccessfully asked Israel not to use white phosphorus munitions as documented by Amnesty International, HRW and UNIFIL itself.

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Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/profughi-siriani-un-dramma-finanziato-dalleuropa on 2024-09-05