The European Union said on Thursday that they will give 1 billion euros (about US$1. 06 billion) to Lebanon. Some of the money will be used to strengthen border control to stop people from Lebanon coming to Cyprus and Italy.
The agreement is like other EU aid deals for countries like Egypt, Tunisia, and Mauritania to make their borders stronger. This is happening as more people in Lebanon are not being nice to Syrian refugees, and there are a lot more Syrian refugees leaving Lebanon and going to Cyprus without following the rules.
Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Union, said in Beirut with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides that the help will begin this year and continue until 2027.
The majority of the help, which is 736 million euros, will help Syrian refugees and other vulnerable people in Lebanon. Another 200 million euros will go to support Lebanese security services in controlling the borders and migration. These numbers were given by the Cypriot government.
Some money would be given to fishermen in Lebanon so they don’t sell their boats to smugglers.
Von der Leyen said the EU will also work on a “better plan to help Syrian refugees go back home” in cooperation with the UN refugee agency. The group will keep providing legal ways for refugees to settle in Europe, she said.
Lebanon’s temporary Prime Minister Najib Mikati liked the plan and said that if Lebanon is safe, then Europe is safe too. He also said that if the problem gets worse, it won’t just affect Lebanon, but it will also affect Europe.
Lebanon has been having a really bad financial crisis since 2019. There are almost 780,000 Syrian refugees who are officially registered in Lebanon, and many more who are not officially registered. Lebanon has the most refugees per person in the world.
Lebanese leaders have been asking other countries for a long time to help the refugees either move to a new country or go back to Syria, even if they don’t want to. Lebanon’s security forces have increased sending Syrians back to their country in the last year.
More problems started after a leader of the Lebanese Forces party, Pascal Suleiman, was killed last month in what military officials said was a failed car robbery by a group from Syria. The event caused some people to attack Syrians.
At the same time, officials in Cyprus say too many Syrian people are coming to their country without permission, especially by boat from Lebanon.
The UNHCR in Lebanon said that they confirmed 59 boats leaving with 3,191 passengers between January and mid-April, compared to only 3 boats with 54 passengers last year. Normally, only a small number of boats try to cross the much more dangerous water in the winter. In 2023, UNHCR saw 65 boats leave with 3,927 people on board.
Cyprus has a new plan to stop the arrival of migrants. Last month, Cyprus stopped accepting Syrian asylum requests. Human rights groups say the Cypriot coast guard sent back five boats with around 500 asylum seekers from Lebanon. Cypriot officials said that it is not true.
Bassel al-Shayoukh, a Syrian refugee from Idlib, has been living in Lebanon since 2014. He said his brother and some relatives were on a boat that was sent back. Now he wants to go on the journey by himself.
“At first, I thought the war in Syria would end in a year or two,” he said. But it continued for a long time. In Lebanon, the same thing happened every year. Things started to get even more bad.
Shayoukh said he is worried about getting hurt by people who are trying to enforce the law or being sent back to Syria after Lebanese authorities refused to extend his permit to stay in the country.
His 17-year-old nephew, who didn’t want to say his name because he was afraid for his safety, said the Cypriot coast guard started moving their boat away by making waves. “I was really scared. ” “I can’t swim,” he said. “I believed we were going to be killed. ”
The people on the boats didn’t have any food or water for three days. Then they went back to Lebanon. The teen said that.
In Lebanon, the army arrested them; the ones with UNHCR were let go and the rest were sent out of the country.
Mohammed Sablouh, a lawyer in Lebanon who helps refugees and migrants, says the Lebanese government is ignoring the increase in migration on purpose to put pressure on the rest of the world.
The Lebanese army didn’t answer when asked about what they’re doing to stop smuggling.
On Thursday, they announced aid before the yearly fundraising conference for the Syrian crisis in Brussels at the end of the month. After 13 years of fighting, people are tired of donating money while everyone is focused on helping people affected by wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
The president of Cyprus said that Thursday was a very important day. He asked European officials to make some areas in Syria safe for people to go back to.
The situation in Lebanon cannot continue like this. It’s not good for Cyprus, and it’s not good for the European Union, Christodoulides said.
However, some Lebanese officials don’t think that the European aid will fix the problem.
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea told The Associated Press this week that European authorities are mainly worried about refugees not going to Europe.
“We have a problem because we can’t have a lot of Syrian refugees coming to our country illegally,” Geagea said. He wants the Syrians to go back to areas in Syria that are controlled by either the government or opposition.
But Shayoukh says he doesn’t have anywhere to go.
The government in Damascus is after him because he is against the Syrian President Bashar Assad. He also said that the Islamist group in his hometown is acting like the government’s intelligence services in silencing people who disagree with them.