World Food Programme ups aid to Lebanon to $5.4bn over three years

Food costs have soared as country struggles with a severe economic crisis

Syrian refugees sit with their belongings on a pickup truck as they prepare to return to Syria from Wadi Hmayyed, on the outskirts of the Lebanese border town of Arsal. All photos: Reuters

Hundreds of Syrian refugees living in Lebanon returned home on Wednesday, the first day of repatriations organised by Beirut, amid rights groups' concerns that the scheme may involve elements of coercion.

Lugging suitcases, power generators, fridges and even chickens, about 700 Syrians who had agreed to cross over gathered from early morning in a desolate north-eastern border zone.

Lebanese authorities said the repatriations, under a revived programme run co-ordinated by the country's General Security agency, are voluntary.

The United Nations says flare-ups in violence and the risk of detention make it still unsafe for large-scale returns.

Lebanon is home to more than 800,000 Syrians registered with the UN refugee agency. At its peak, Lebanon hosted around 1.2 million.

They fled the violence in the aftermath of protests against Syrian President Bashar Al Assad in 2011.

In 2018, the General Security agency launched a mechanism through which any Syrian refugee could signal a desire to return home.

That pathway saw about 400,000 Syrians return home but was put on hold with the outbreak of Covid-19.

Outgoing Lebanese President Michel Aoun revived it this month and it resumed on Wednesday.

The World Food Programme will give $5.4 billion in aid over the next three years to Lebanon, which is grappling with a devastating economic crisis that has plunged much of the population into poverty.

The announcement came after a meeting between caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and the WFP’s Lebanon office representative Abdallah Alwardat.

Mr Alwardat said the aid would be extended to about one million Lebanese and one million Syrian refugees.

Mr Mikati said the aid should be "divided equally between the Lebanese and the Syrian refugees".

Lebanon, which is heavily reliant on imports, has a population of about six million, including more than one million Syrian refugees who have fled their country’s civil war over the past decade and live in poverty. Meanwhile, Lebanon's first cholera outbreak in three decades has hit Syrian refugee camps in border areas particularly hard.

The WFP once allocated $700 million in food assistance to Lebanon every year, and upped that to $1.3 billion in 2022. Its assistance has included aid to children and farmers. Now, it has set aside $5.4 billion for the 2023-2025 period, Mr Mikati said.

“I also [insisted] that the products purchased for the purpose of food aid be entirely from Lebanon and I was promised that this would happen,” he said after meeting Mr Alwardat.

Mr Mikati said the increase in food aid to Lebanon came after the recent meeting of the WFP’s executive board in Rome.

An economic crisis that first became apparent in 2019 has led the local currency to plunge in value by more than 95 per cent and food costs have soared. More than 80 per cent of people in Lebanon now live in poverty.

There are also widespread shortages of clean water, bread, electricity, medicines and other basic supplies.

There are fears that a governance vacuum, with MPs failing to agree on a successor to former president Michel Aoun and Mr Mikati unable to form a new government for months, will only exacerbate the crisis further.