by Karen Rahme | Lebanon Support

Lebanon’s nation-wide lockdown meant to protect residents, and mitigate the spread of COVID-19, has disproportionately affected the socio-economic conditions of vulnerable populations. The global health crisis has notably compounded the detrimental results of a collapsing economy. For Syrian refugees, already struggling in terms of freedom of movement (or lack thereof), all the while living under the extreme poverty line, home confinement has only worsened livelihoods and living conditions, and further constrained already restricted access to public services.

by Johanna-Maria Huelzer, Alli Divine | Lebanon Support

The Lebanese social protection system is fragmented, inefficient, and highly privatised. Available social services are insufficient, leaving the poorest and most vulnerable of the Lebanese population, without systematic support of their basic needs. This lack of provision exposes the urgent need for substantial reform of the official Lebanese social protection system. One of the many outgrowths of a “laissez-faire”…

by Alli Divine, Johanna-Maria Huelzer | Lebanon Support

Lebanon’s borders are simultaneously porous, largely un-demarcated, and heavily militarised. Lebanon’s border with Syria, mapped by the French mandate, was never fully formalised before the colonial withdrawal in 1943. Characterised by fluidity, and circular labor migration, between Syrians and Lebanese through the 1990s, it was largely overlooked by state actors until the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011. Indeed, no formal international boundary agreement exists between the two countries.

Much like the border with Syria, Lebanon’s southern border facilitated constant flows of people and commerce until 1949, when the emergence of the Palestinian Intifada led to border closure between Israel and Lebanon. War between Israel and its neighbors in 1948 and 1967, combined with intermittent Israeli occupations of Lebanon’s southern villages, subsequently hardened the border.

by RESPOND Project

The EC-funded international research project “RESPOND: Multilevel Governance of Mass Migration in Europe and Beyond” calls for human-rights responses to the explosive situation at the refugee camp “Moria” and in the Aegean region.

After another fire in which a woman was burnt to death, on Sunday 29 September 2019, the inhuman and volatile situation of the “hot-spot” Moria on the Greek island, Lesbos attracted further worldwide publicity. The woman’s death on Sunday was the third in the last two months.

Over the past year, returns of Syrian refugees from Lebanon have risen steadily. Of the nearly 1 million UN-registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon (a further 500,000 are estimated to be in the country informally), around 20,000 are reported to have returned. Every month, hundreds make the journey to Syria via one of the 5 official border crossings…

The eruption of the Syrian crisis in 2011 has resulted in an increase of Syrians in Lebanon, from estimately 300 000 to over 1.1 million in 2014 at the peak of the refugee crisis, leading the Council of Ministers to adopt a series of policies targeting Syrian displacement in October 2014…