UN steps in to help displaced people return home

As Syrian refugees begin to trickle back to a homeland still at war, aid agencies fear that a proposed change to UN guidelines could accelerate the pace of returns.

At least 5.1 million people have left Syria during the sixyear conflict, with most seeking safety in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) deemed the threat of violence and detention in Syria so grave that it has supported many of the refugees in the region.

But as the influx strains economies and deepens political tensions, host governments have discouraged refugees from settling permanently.

In Lebanon this year, Syrian refugees have been evicted from makeshift displacement camps. In Jordan, hundreds of Syrian refugees are being deported across the border monthly with little warning and no recourse.

“That the Syrian refugee crisis was long-term and therefore needed sustainable solutions was clear until recently. But now there has been a shift,” said Jeff Crisp, former head of policy development at UNHCR.

The UN agency said in June that it monitored “a notable trend of spontaneous returns” to Syria, with more than 22,000 refugees crossing back into the country between January and May.

There are few signs that mass returns will happen anytime soon, but UNHCR is preparing to resettle the growing number who do cross back into Syria, recruiting new staffers in the country and seeking an additional $150 million.

The increase in returns to Syria is partly a response to improving conditions in some areas of the country. Forces backing President Bashar Al Assad have recaptured most major urban centres, and thousands of rebel fighters once scattered throughout the country have relocated to an Al Qaeda-dominated province in the north under a series of government-driven truces.

But while government-held areas are largely secured from the threat of open warfare, many

If refugees in Lebanon decide to return to Syria as a result of an erosion of security, we would not consider these returns to be ‘voluntary’

refugees fear the prospect of arrest or conscription to Syria’s overstretched army on return.

“I cannot trust anyone if I go back,” said Emad, a student from Aleppo who spoke on the condition that his second name be withheld out of fear for his safety. Now living in Tripoli, he described what was meant to be a short trip back to Syria in 2014 to secure paperwork needed for a Lebanese permit.

Arrested within hours of arriving in Damascus, the capital, he said he was tortured for more than a year in the government’s detention centres.

Other returnees say the grinding poverty of their lives abroad left them with little choice.

“We always thought we’d go back to Syria one day. We never realised it would be out of desperation or exhaustion,” said Maya, a young mother of four now living in Damascus.

When the family lived in Lebanon, Maya and her husband stopped sending their children to school for two years after their residency papers expired.

“No parent wants to make that decision, but what else were we meant to do? If the boys had to cross a checkpoint without their papers, something could happen to them,” she said.

Mike Bruce, an advocacy officer for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Beirut, said the cost and complexities facing Syrian refugees who apply for residency in Lebanon are causing families to struggle to meet even their most basic needs.

“If refugees in Lebanon decide to return to Syria as a result of an erosion of security, protection or quality of life, or as a result of severe economic hardship, evictions or an otherwise coercive environment, we would not consider these returns to be ‘voluntary,” he said.

In recent weeks, rumours have swirled among refugees. A message claiming that families must leave by September 1 went viral on messaging apps. Another falsely said UNHCR was planning to close its offices in Jordan.

“At times it’s bordering on hysteria,” one aid worker said. “We’re doing a lot of work to try and calm people down, but it’s getting harder and harder to convince them that they’re safe.” —Washington Post Syndicate Louisa Loveluck is a reporter in the Post’s Beirut bureau,

focusing on Syria