EU announces 1 billion euros in aid for Lebanon amid migration boom

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — The European Union announced Thursday an aid package for Lebanon of one billion euros — about $1.6 billion — of which a significant portion would go to strengthening border controls to stem the flow of applicants. of asylum and migrants leaving the small and turbulent country to cross the Mediterranean on the way to Cyprus and Italy.

The agreement follows similar announcements by the EU about funds for countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Mauritania to secure their borders. It came against a backdrop of growing hostility towards Syrian refugees in Lebanon and a large increase in irregular immigration of Syrian refugees traveling from Lebanon to Cyprus.

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced the aid plan, which will be distributed between this year and 2027, during a visit to Beirut with the president of Cyprus, Nikos Christodoulides.

The bulk of the package – 736 million euros – will go to keeping Syrian refugees “and other vulnerable groups” in Lebanon, while 200 million euros would go to strengthening Lebanese security services for border control and migration, according to figures provided by the Cypriot government.

An unspecified amount of aid would go to Lebanese fishermen to discourage them from selling their boats to smugglers.

The EU will also study “how to work on a more structured strategy of voluntary return to Syria” in close cooperation with UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, Von der Leyen said. The official called for more international support for humanitarian and recovery projects in Syria.

Europe will also maintain “legal pathways” for the resettlement of refugees in Europe, he added.

Lebanon’s interim prime minister, Najib Mikati, welcomed the aid package, saying that “Lebanon’s security is security for European countries and vice versa.”

“Any outbreak related to the problem of displaced people will not be limited to Lebanon, but will spread to Europe to become a regional and international crisis,” he said.

Lebanon, mired in a severe financial crisis since 2019, hosts nearly 785,000 registered Syrian refugees and hundreds of thousands more unregistered, the highest per capita refugee population in the world.

For years, Lebanese authorities have been asking the international community to either relocate refugees to other countries or assist in their return to Syria, whether voluntarily or not. Lebanese security forces have increased deportations of Syrians in the last year.

Tensions over the presence of refugees have soared since a member of the Christian nationalist Lebanese Forces party, Pascal Suleiman, was killed last month in what military officials have described as a botched carjacking by a Syrian gang. . The incident sparked outbreaks of violence against Syrians by civilian groups.

For their part, Cypriot authorities have complained that their country has been overwhelmed by a wave of irregular migration of Syrian asylum seekers, many of whom arrive by boat from Lebanon.

The UNHCR office in Lebanon says it verified 59 “actual or attempted” departures of ships carrying a total of 3,191 passengers from the country between January and mid-April, among the three documented ships with 54 passengers registered in the same period of the year. former.

There are usually few ships that attempt the crossing in winter, when the journey is most dangerous. In total, UNHCR counted 65 boat departures with 3,927 passengers in all of 2023.

Cyprus has used increasingly aggressive tactics to curb arrivals. Last month it suspended processing Syrian asylum applications, and human rights groups accused the Cypriot coast guard of forcibly turning back five ships carrying some 500 asylum seekers from Lebanon. The Cypriot authorities have denied this.

Christodoulides hailed Thursday’s visit as a “historic day” and welcomed the EU’s decision, as well as calling on the bloc’s authorities to go further and declare that some areas of Syria are safe to return to.

“The current situation is not sustainable for Lebanon. It is not sustainable for Cyprus. It is not sustainable for the European Union,” she said.

The new funding announcement was made ahead of the annual Syrian crisis fundraising conference, scheduled in Brussels this month. After 13 years of civil war in Syria, donor fatigue has set in as the world’s attention focuses on the humanitarian needs of more recent conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.