Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Wednesday that his country will begin at the end of next week to return Syrians to their country, in a process that a security official described as voluntary, despite human rights groups' concerns about their safety.

Meanwhile, Ismail Çatakli, Deputy Minister of the Interior of Turkey, announced that the number of refugees returning to what he described as "liberated areas" from northern Syria is constantly increasing.

Lebanon hosts the largest number of refugees in the world, per capita.

The government estimates that the country's population of more than 6 million includes nearly 1.5 million refugees from neighboring Syria, which is much more than the UNHCR registered 839,000 refugees registered as of March 31, 2022.

Abbas Ibrahim, director of Lebanon's General Security Service responsible for the country's borders, said the returns would be voluntary and based on a mechanism first used in 2018 before it was halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

And Reuters news agency quoted an official source that the repatriation operations will be limited only to those who voluntarily registered to return with the General Directorate of Lebanese General Security, in coordination with the Ministry of Social Affairs in the country, noting that no one will be forced to leave.

In July, the Lebanese Minister of the Displaced, Issam Sharaf El-Din, announced a plan to return about 15,000 refugees to Syria per month, citing that Syria has become largely safe more than a decade after the outbreak of the war.

The plan will not include any role for the United Nations, which insists that conditions in Syria do not allow for a large-scale return of refugees.


"You are going to your death"

For its part, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Lebanon said that it "does not facilitate or support large-scale voluntary repatriations of refugees to Syria."

New York-based Human Rights Watch said in July that "Syria is far from providing security and safety for returnees."

"Syrian refugees who returned between 2017 and 2021 from Lebanon and Jordan faced massive human rights violations and persecution at the hands of the Syrian government and its militias," wrote Lama Fakih, director of the Middle East department at the organization.

In a previous report, Amnesty International highlighted the violations committed against Syrian refugees who had previously returned to their country.

In its report, entitled "You are going to your death," the organization said that Syrian intelligence officers had subjected returning women, children and men to illegal or arbitrary detention and torture.

Amnesty International has concluded that no part of Syria is safe for refugees to return to, including Damascus or its environs, and that people who have left Syria since the beginning of the conflict are at real risk of persecution upon return.

One of the Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon (Al-Jazeera)

Turkey: a continuous increase in the number of returnees

On the other hand, Ismail Çatakli, Deputy Minister of the Interior of Turkey, announced yesterday, Wednesday, that the number of refugees returning to what he described as "areas liberated from terrorism" in northern Syria is constantly increasing.

This came in a press conference held by Chatakli, after a tour of journalists in the Syrian city of Azaz to find out the efforts made to develop the liberated areas.

Çatakli said, "The population of the liberated areas in Syria has doubled from 1,300,000 to 2,100,000, of whom 526,000 have returned from Turkey."

He pointed out that "this number is constantly increasing as part of Turkey's strategy to secure a dignified and voluntary return of Syrians to their country."

It is noteworthy that Turkey currently hosts the largest number of registered Syrian refugees, more than 3.6 million people.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there are 6.6 million Syrian refugees around the world, 5.5 million of whom are hosted by countries neighboring Syria.