Syrian Refugee Return Dynamics in the EU’s ‘Neighborhood’ – Between Externalization and Impact
Lebanon-Syria-Israel Border, Source: joshuapiano, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
by: Nora Stel, Marieke van Houte | Radboud University
When voluntary, safe and dignified, ‘return’ is often seen as the most feasible and desirable ‘durable solution’ to forced displacement. Since most refugees stay within the region of their country of origin, and the EU’s ‘effective’ restriction of mobility ensures that most people wanting to travel further afield never make it to Europe, such refugee return predominantly takes place from countries within the regions of ‘countries of origin.’ At the same time, such regional return dynamics - in settings that the EU considers its ‘neighborhood’ - are affected by the EU’s external migration policy and politics, in ways that so far remain largely implicit and ‘hidden’. Our GAPs research seeks to explicate such connections to better understand the factors that shape refugee return and the ways these intersect with international protection norms and rights.
The pertinence of the ways in which EU policy and politics shape refugee return dynamics in its vicinity is illustrated by the case of Syrian refugee return from Lebanon. The decade-long war in Syria has generated the largest displacement crisis of our time, with an estimated 7 million people internally displaced and some 6 million Syrians seeking refuge elsewhere. Around 1.5 million of them currently live in neighboring Lebanon, where they now make up approximately a quarter of the population. For a multitude of reasons – including the country’s precarious sectarian ‘balance’ and political immobilism, the ‘trauma’ of the politicized and militarized Palestinian refugee presence in the country, and a unprecedented economic and financial crisis – Lebanon has always shunned the integration of Syrian refugees.
In the face of minimal resettlement numbers, blocked routes for onward migration, and ever dwindling funding for hosting refugees from ‘the West,’ Syrian refugees in Lebanon have come under increasing pressure to return to Syria – even though UNHCR and a wide array of human rights organizations have clearly demonstrated that the conditions for safe, dignified, and voluntary return are not in place.
Since October 2014, Lebanon has ‘encouraged’ refugees to go back to Syria by increasing marginalization and criminalization of their presence. It has facilitated return programs through which Lebanese security agencies ask their Syrian counterparts to check and ensure if enlisted people would be safe in Syria (guarantees which have proven to be quite shaky). And it has deported Syrians that have faced a criminal sentence or – under a 2019 decree from the Higher Defense Council – who have irregularly entered the country after April 2019 and are currently without legal residency.
While these dynamics are primarily determined by intra-Lebanese and bilateral Syrian-Lebanese interests and actions, they are also related to the EU’s external migration policy. By outsourcing the hosting of refugees to its regional ‘partners’ – Lebanon, Türkiye, Jordan, Iraq – through ‘deals’ and ‘compacts’ that exchange funding for containment, the EU has crucially shaped the current state of the ‘Syrian refugee crisis’ and thereby increasing pressures to return.
It also affects ongoing return dynamics more directly. This takes the form of both public and silent diplomacy of EU representatives in the face of mounting return pressure in Lebanon in which they reiterate non-refoulement, a core principle of international refugee and human rights law that prohibits States from returning individuals to a country where there is a real risk of being subjected to persecution , torture , inhuman or degrading treatment or any other human rights violation, as a consistent ‘red line’ – and in doing so supposedly decrease Lebanon’s political will to enforce returns. Simultaneously, and perhaps paradoxically, it takes the form of European financial support for the Lebanese border control agencies and programs that are central to enhancing Lebanon’s return capacities.
That the EU’s potential impact on Syrian refugee returns and refoulement within its neighborhood merits further attention is evident. In this part of the GAPs study, we will further investigate how the two are related – if and to what extent is funding actually made conditional on upholding non-refoulement, for instance. Or how, for example, the different levels and branches of the EU’s notoriously complex institutions as well as individual member state positions relate to each other when it comes to refugee return to Syria? Finding answers to these questions will help to hold state- and supra-state actors accountable for their de-facto migration governance practices, whether inside or outside their territories.
Contact:
Nora Stel | Radboud University, Nijmegen | nora.stel@ru.nl
Marieke van Houte | Radboud University, Nijmegen | marieke.vanhoute@ru.nl