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By Emma Gatten, Olivia Alabaster
BEIRUT: As the conflict in Syria
reaches its first year anniversary this week, an escalation in the flow of
refugees across the border looks increasingly likely, raising the questions
of how the government should define these displaced people, and how their
needs can be met.
By U.N. estimates there are now
around 12,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon: 7,088 formally registered jointly
with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and Lebanon’s Higher Relief
Committee in north Lebanon and another 5,000 unregistered in the Bekaa and
south of Beirut.
However, according to Syrian
activists in Lebanon, the real total is far higher, as families escape the
brutal crackdown across the porous, 365-kilometer-long border.
Speaking earlier this month,
President Michel Sleiman downplayed fears over an influx of Syrians, and
said that, “We are treating the Syrians who fled as families, as relatives
and not as refugees.”
Beirut, which is not a signatory
to the U.N. 1951 Convention on Refugees, defines all refugees in the
country, including Syrians, as “displaced people.”
The UNHCR, however, “considers
those who escape conflict to be refugees,” said Dana Sleiman, a
spokesperson for the UNHCR.
“At the end of the day, if [the
Syrians] are receiving the help they need, we don’t mind if the Lebanese
government refers to them as refugees or not,” she added.
While around 200 refugees are
living in rehabilitated abandoned schools in Wadi Khaled, the vast majority
are residing with host families, according to the UNHCR.
Over the next couple of weeks,
the UNHCR will begin issuing Refugee Certificates to those registered with
the agency.
While it’s a largely
bureaucratic measure, to help manage the distribution of services and
control fraud, it will hopefully also help improve the quality of life of
those refugees unable to move or find work, many of whom have now been
living in the country for months.
“We’re hoping it would help
allow them to move more freely as they would have a UNHCR document,”
Sleiman said, adding, however, that it was “not a guarantee.”
In July of last year, the
government decided to hand out circulation permits to those in the north,
which would enable them to exit the Wadi Khaled area, cordoned off by check
points, and, eventually, to find work. However these have yet to surface.
“We are still lobbying for these
circulation permits,” Sleiman said.
Responsibility for provisions
for registered refugees comes under the UNHCR and the government’s HRC,
which work in close coordination to provide basic provisions, such as food,
blankets, hygiene kits and heating materials.
The HRC is also responsible for
funding emergency medical care for wounded Syrians in hospitals in and
around Tripoli.
This situation is vastly
different from provision given to Iraqi refugees, when thousands fled to
Lebanon between 2003 and 2007 and provision was provided solely by the
UNHCR.
Elie Khoury, the coordinator of
international donations at the HRC, said this was because Iraqi refugees
were scattered across the country, and did not stay in Lebanon for long
periods of time.
In contrast, according to
Khoury, the HRC currently has no ceiling on its funding to provide for
those displaced from Syria.
Several other nongovernmental
organizations work in tandem with the UNHCR and HRC to fill gaps in
provision, from ongoing medical care to remedial classes for children.
These bodies include the
Lebanese and International Red Cross and Crescent, the International
Medical Corps, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and Save the Children.
They work with the UNHRC and HRC
to identify areas of need, and provide a flow of communication.
“For the time being I have to
say the cooperation we’ve had with authorities, and specifically the HRC,
has been quite productive,” said Fabio Forgione, the head of the MSF
Lebanon mission. “Our main objective is to focus on the main gaps, which
for one reason or another cannot be provided by governmental institutions.”
But while the conflict
continues, and the importance of planning long-term strategies for
accommodating Syrian refugees grows, the HRC says it is focusing on working
“day to day.”
“Politics makes it difficult to
work on these issues,” Khoury said, adding that the HRC “doesn’t want to
have those [long-term] plans.” He said that while all political parties
were committed to the current levels of humanitarian assistance, refugee
issues were nonetheless politically contentious.
March 14 politicians have spoken
of the need to establish refugee camps on the Syrian border; camps on the
Turkish border house around 12,000 Syrians.
However, Hezbollah last week
rejected the idea, with the party’s deputy, Sheikh Naim Qassem, saying that
camps would prove ultimately dangerous to Lebanon.
“Any camp for Syrians in Lebanon
will turn into a military pocket that will be used as a launchpad against
Syria and then against Lebanon,” he said.
UNHCR’S Sleiman said that camps
would always be a final measure.
“We have the expertise to
establish camps, but we want this to be a last resort,” she said.
Enabling refugees to reside with
host families is the agency’s preferred choice, allowing for “the most
normal living conditions,” Sleiman said. Camps, densely populated by
nature, are more likely to become unsanitary and “alienate and stigmatize
the displaced population.”
Not only that, but camps would,
“raise the visibility of the community,” she added, rendering them, “more
vulnerable to external attacks.”
However, “we would establish
camps if there was an actual need ... We have to be prepared.”
Several organizations refused to
comment on their current and future strategies in providing assistance to
Syrians in Lebanon, including the Danish Refugee Council and the
International Medical Corps, which provides primary health care, because
their work comes under the umbrella of the UNHCR and the HRC.
Others, including Save the
Children, say they are monitoring the situation, with no specific long-term
plans. The organization, which provides remedial classes for around 750
children, said it carried out an assessment of the situation in Tripoli
last week, and will shortly do the same in the Bekaa. Mona Monzer, a
communications and advocacy officer with the charity, said it is
considering expanding its services as refugee numbers rise, but that “so
far, we have no plans for the long term.”
“We have prepared a team for
[the next] four months, then when three months pass we will see how to
proceed,” she said.
Samar al-Kadi, a spokesperson
for the International Committee for the Red Cross, which provides
logistical support for emergency medical care through the Lebanese Red
Cross, said the organization was “monitoring the situation closely.”
“We are aware that things could
escalate, and deteriorate, from a humanitarian aspect,” she said. So far,
she said, “we haven’t plans for tomorrow,” but she added that “we have to
prepare for the worst case scenario.”
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