No return in sight for Syrian refugees in Lebanon
View of Beirut (Illustrative Image).
© Éric Bataillon / RFI
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
In Lebanon, more than 850,000 Syrians are registered as refugees with the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.
Their number is higher, according to the Beirut authorities.
After a peak in 2019, the number of voluntary returns has collapsed, this year it is at the lowest since 2016. Among the reasons which slow down a return, security reasons and the economic situation.
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With our correspondent in Beirut,
Laure Stephan
Mohamed was a teenager when he fled southern Syria with his family.
At 23, he worked with his father in a small grocery store in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
He still has relatives there in Syria.
Despite the extremely serious economic crisis in Lebanon, he is waiting before a possible return.
“
Like young people my age, my biggest fear is the army, military service.
And if I want to avoid it, get a dispensation, I would have to pay a sum of around
8,000 dollars… Moreover, a lot of people there tell me that the situation there is not good at all.
"
"It's better here, at least I work"
Ahmad, in his forties, works as a baker in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
He lived in Lebanon before the war and brought his family there when the conflict broke out.
A regrouping which he believed to be temporary, but which lasted.
“
We left with my family to live in Syria for a year, in 2014-2015.
In the Soueida region, in the south.
But the situation was not good, so we came back.
Here it is better, at least I am working.
We are registered with UNHCR, and we will now be resettled soon, in New Zealand.
"
In New Zealand, Ahmad says he hopes to find security and economic stability.
►Also read: Interview - "The vast majority of Syrian refugees in Turkey wish to stay there"
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Lebanon
Syria
Refugees
Immigration