EU funds Lebanese security forces 'forcibly returning Syrians to Syria'

Making refugees return to country is against humans rights law, report finds

Members of the Lebanese security forces stand guard in front of a barrier. EPA

The EU funds training and infrastructure for Lebanese security forces involved in border management who forcibly send Syrian refugees back to Syria after their expulsion from Cyprus, a practice that goes against human rights laws, a Human Rights Watch report has found.

HRW, which spoke to 15 Syrians who claimed to have suffered human rights violations at the hands of Lebanese and Cypriot authorities, said Cyprus did not allow them to make asylum claims and in some cases violently forced them on vessels bound for Beirut – a practice that is also against international law. Both Lebanese and Cypriot authorities have denied human rights violations.

The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said it is aware of possible violations of human rights by Lebanese security actors but it appears this has not stopped it from increasing its funding to an external think tank, the International Centre for Migration Policy Development, that works with those security forces.

In May, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a €1 billion ($1.1 billion) package for Lebanon, which included funding for security forces, although it remains unclear what exactly they have received. One week later, Lebanon's most powerful security agency, General Security, announced new measures to restrict Syrians' ability to obtain legal status, said HRW.

Under a Dutch-funded project, the ICPMD provides them human rights courses, but appears not to measure whether this translates in compliance in border actions, said HRW.

'Inherent contradiction'

“The omission is particularly concerning as many abuses committed by Lebanese security actors against Syrian refugees and asylum seekers had continued between June and September 2023, after ICMPD supposedly delivered the above training in May 2023,” said the report.

“The inherent and unacceptable contradiction is obvious: as the ICMPD continued receiving sizeable project funding and hailing the Lebanese security agencies’ “significant progress” in human rights compliance, the very same agencies continued to commit abuses against Syrian refugees.”

The EU and European countries gave Lebanon about 16.7 million euros ($18.5 million) from 2020 to 2023 for border management “mainly in the form of capacity-building projects explicitly aimed at enhancing Lebanon’s ability to prevent irregular migration”, the report said. In August, the EU allocated another 32 million euros ($35.3 million) to “continue implementing border management enhancement projects in Lebanon through 2025”, it said.

Lebanon hosts the highest number of refugees per capita in the world – about 1.5 million Syrians – and stopped allowing them to be registered as refugees in 2015.

Burdened by an unprecedented and protracted financial crisis, the small Mediterranean country has turned increasingly hostile to Syrians, who are “trapped in perpetual vulnerability in Lebanon”, said HRW.

Syrians are increasingly trying to make it to Cyprus, which has witnessed a surge of arrivals and stopped issuing Syrian asylum applications in April. There are about 30,000 Syrians in Cyprus, a country of 900,000 inhabitants.

Syria's 13-year-old civil war has pushed millions to flee abroad. Less than one per cent want to return home, the UN has found, because of economic and security concerns.

Cyprus returns irregular migrants to Lebanon as part of a 2020 agreement, the Cypriot Ministry of Interior told HRW, but said practical details were in the hands of the police, which did not give further details.

Some EU countries are increasingly vocal about wanting to send Syrians back to Syria despite a lack of a political solution to the conflict and President Bashar Al Assad's statements saying he does not want refugees back for economic, political and sectarian reasons.

The National exclusively reported in June that the Czech Republic was working on a fact-finding mission in Syria to establish “safe zones” and that Cyprus had expressed interest.

In the HRW report, Habib, a 15-year-old Syrian from Idlib who moved to Lebanon when he was three years old and travelled alone to Cyprus, described having his hands zip-tied with other children as he was forced to sail back to Lebanon.

After the seven-hour trip to Beirut, the Lebanese army was waiting and beat one of the men during questioning, Habib said.

“They started making fun of us and said they would send us to Maher Al Assad who is in charge of the Syrian army’s Fourth Division,” he said, referring to a branch of Syria's much-feared security forces run by a brother of Mr Al Assad.

The Lebanese army then loaded them on a bus, drove them to the Syrian border, at Masnaa crossing point, and told them to walk across the border. Some were detained by the Syrian army, but they all paid smugglers to bring them back to Lebanon.

Beate Gminder of the European Commission’s Migration and Home Affairs directorate said in a response to the report’s findings that the commission “takes allegations of wrongdoings very seriously”, but that it is the responsibility of national authorities to “investigate any allegations of violations of fundamental rights” and to prosecute wrongdoing.