On May 2, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen traveled to Beirut with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides. They were there to strike a $1.07 billion deal with Lebanon’s caretaker government to support the country’s “socio-economic stability” and curb the illegal migration of Syrian refugees to Cyprus.
A surge in migrant boat arrivals of Syrians led the Cypriot government to temporarily suspend the processing of all asylum applications by Syrian nationals in mid-April. According to United Nations data, 3,481 Syrians arrived in Cyprus between January and May of this year. The overwhelming majority arrived in the country by sea from Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria, although a smaller portion crossed by land from the Turkish-controlled portion of Northern Cyprus.
The renewed refugee crisis in Europe comes as Syrians in Lebanon face rising hostility both from the country’s residents and its government.
Syrian refugees have fled to neighboring Lebanon since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011. Today, between 1.5 million and 2 million Syrian refugees are estimated to live in Lebanon, according to the government; nearly 800,000 are officially registered as refugees with the United Nations Refugee Agency, or UNHCR. Although some Syrian refugees work in the agriculture and construction sectors, 9 out of 10 “require humanitarian assistance to meet their basic needs,” UNHCR reports.
As Lebanon’s economic and political situation has deteriorated over the past five years, Syrian refugees have become an easy scapegoat for the country’s woes. In recent months, they have faced violence and xenophobia from some Lebanese citizens—as well as arrests, evictions, torture, and deportations at the hands of the state.
The result is that Syrian refugees feel trapped between the far-off dream of settling in Europe, the hostile climate in Lebanon, and the fear of deportation to their home country—which could be a death sentence.
Since 2022, Lebanon has sought voluntary repatriation of Syrian refugees, claiming that large swaths of Syria are now safe. The country, which is experiencing an acute economic crisis, has also cited the financial burden of accommodating so many migrants—although UNHCR and the EU contribute billions of dollars to help Syrian refugees and vulnerable Lebanese. Syria’s readmission to the Arab League last year also furthered repatriation efforts.
The voluntary return process for Syrians in Lebanon has drawn criticism from human rights advocates, as refugees struggle to make informed return decisions amid restrictive Lebanese government policies, discrimination, limited access to public services, and inadequate information about Syria’s current human rights situation. Beirut previously requested that UNHCR cease registering Syrian refugees in 2015 and imposed stringent residency regulations for Syrians.
Repatriation isn’t always voluntary, however; Lebanon’s stricter policy toward Syrian refugees also includes forced deportations. The government points to a 2019 decision by the Higher Defense Council, a body that advises the government on national security and defense matters, by which Lebanese authorities can repatriate any Syrians who entered Lebanon irregularly after April 24, 2019.
Deportations escalated significantly in 2023. Marred by documented abusive and discriminatory treatment, including arbitrary detentions and torture, deportations have targeted not only Syrians who arrived in Lebanon after the April 2019 date but also those who arrived earlier and were registered with UNHCR.
Meanwhile, some EU member states, such as Cyprus and Denmark, are pressing the EU to consider recognizing certain parts of Syria as safe zones. However, human rights organizations such as Amnesty International allege that such a move would breach the non-refoulement principle under international law, which prohibits returning refugees to countries where they could face torture or persecution.
Last year, Lebanon intensified raids aimed at returning Syrian refugees to their country, regardless their legal status. The Lebanese Army deported or pushed back at least 13,700 Syrians, a significant increase from 1,500 in 2022, according to data provided to Foreign Policy. From January to April 2024, Lebanese General Security—the agency in charge of foreigners’ affairs and border security—deported at least 301 Syrians, and the Lebanese Army deported or pushed back at least 1,000 from northern Lebanon into Syria, according to the same sources. Human rights organizations allege that the two organizations deport Syrians without respecting legal procedures.
Tensions over Syrian refugees’ presence in Lebanon escalated further in early April, when politician Pascal Sleiman, a member of the Christian Lebanese Forces party, was abducted and killed. The Lebanese Forces initially accused Hezbollah of involvement in his death, which Hezbollah denied. Investigations later led to the arrest of a gang of seven Syrian nationals, who confessed to assaulting Sleiman in a carjacking incident and transporting his body to Syria. In the days following Sleiman’s killing, Lebanese groups assaulted Syrian passersby and verbally threated Syrians if they did not move out of Bourj Hammoud, a town northeast of Beirut.
This kind of anti-Syrian sentiment is widespread in Lebanon. The dynamic was evident in Beirut on June 5, when at least one gunman—a Syrian—opened fire near the U.S. Embassy. In an attempt to prevent escalation against Syrians, the U.S. Embassy implored the public via X that “this incident not be taken out of context and used as a weapon against the refugee community in Lebanon.”
Jad Shahrour, a spokesperson for the Samir Kassir Foundation, told Foreign Policy that public scapegoating of Syrian refugees serves politicians’ agendas. Politicians have “all these tools … ready to raise the hate speech campaigns against the refugees whenever they feel that they need such a scapegoat.”
In mid-April, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati announced that “most Syrians” in Lebanon would be deported as soon as the international community recognized safe zones in Syria. Issam Sharaf al-Din, Lebanon’s minister of displaced persons, called for opening maritime borders to allow Syrian refugees to leave Lebanon by sea and to pressure displaced Syrians to return to their country, a stance echoed by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Ramzi Kaiss, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Foreign Policy that since July 2023, the organization has documented thousands of summary deportations of Syrians from Lebanon by the Lebanese Army, which has targeted residential areas and tented settlements.
“Individuals who were registered with UNHCR were deported regardless of their refugee status, including those who had real fears of being returned to Syria,” he said. He mentioned cases where Lebanese authorities deported Syrian opposition activists and army defectors as well as cases of torture, eviction orders, and curfews to limit Syrian refugees’ movement.
Rafaat Falih is a 33-year-old Syrian Army defector who sought refuge in Lebanon in 2022. He was arrested by Lebanese authorities in January but then disappeared. The Cedar Centre for Legal Studies (CCLS), which assists individuals facing torture and arbitrary detentions, suggests that he may have been secretly deported to Syria.
Foreign Policy reached Falih’s relatives in Syria by phone from Beirut. They said they found out that Falih is currently detained in the Sednaya military prison near Damascus, which is known colloquially as the “Human Slaughterhouse.” Relatives were asked to pay about $2,000 to facilitate Falih’s transfer from the prison to the military judiciary to appear before the court, but they couldn’t secure the funds. One family member had the rare chance to visit Falih in prison and reported that his health was poor due to malnutrition and systematic torture.
Saadeddine Shatila, the executive director of CCLS, said the Lebanese Army is returning many refugees directly to Syrian authorities without their cases first being forwarded to the public prosecutor of Lebanon’s Cassation Court—a process that violates Lebanese law.
Final decisions about deportations officially lie with the director of Lebanese General Security and the public prosecutor. When a Syrian national is arrested in Lebanon without legal residency—or if they entered after April 24, 2019—they are taken to General Security. If they are not registered with UNHCR or don’t have legal residency in Lebanon, they are returned to Syria. If they are registered with UNHCR, a representative visits them in prison to ask if they want to voluntarily return to Syria or stay in Lebanon.
From Nov. 15, 2023, to May 30, 2024, CCLS handled 200 cases of individuals who were at risk of deportation to Syria. Out of these, 126 cases were submitted to the U.N. (including to UNHCR and mechanisms such as the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and the special rapporteur on torture), 33 individuals were freed, and 28 were deported to Syria. Ten of those deported were arrested in Syria. Shatila argues that unlawful deportation also constitutes torture under Article 3 of the U.N. Convention Against Torture.
Ultimately, he blames Lebanese authorities for stoking an anti-Syrian narrative. Shahrour of the Samir Kassir Foundation concurs. “Hate speech against refugees distracts from Lebanon’s deeper issues like political corruption,” he said, urging that solutions be made “in transparent aid distribution and accountability, not scapegoating.”
One of CCLS’s torture-related cases concerns Abdel, a pseudonym for a 38-year-old man who wishes to remain anonymous to protect his safety.
Abdel told Foreign Policy by phone that Lebanese authorities arrested him in 2015. They accused him of murder and belonging to a designated terrorist organization, which he denied. Then, he said, they tortured him to extort a confession.
“Lebanon’s Army Intelligence beat me with a hosepipe all over my body. There was a gun in the investigation office where they threatened to kill me and hit me on the head with their boot. … When they saw the blood … they stopped beating,” he recounted. “They then resumed hitting me with the pipe multiple times and threatened me with electric shocks and handing me over to the regime.”
He has since undergone surgery twice yet continues to suffer from severe pain. He is not alone; in 2021, Amnesty International documented similar cases of 24 Syrian refugees who were detained in Lebanon on terrorism-related charges before being subjected to torture. And so long as the Lebanese government continues to detain Syrians and threaten them with deportation, the abuse is likely to continue.
For those sent back to Syria, a worse fate awaits. As a relative of one deportee told Foreign Policy, “They can kill him by torture and bury him in a mass grave, as happened with thousands of detainees; they can execute him by firing squad, or he can die as a result of diseases and malnutrition.”