‘ Syria land law may dispossess refugees’

Beirut, May 26: Lebanon’s top diplomat warned Saturday that a recent Syrian property law could dispossess hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees from their land back home, leaving them permanently displaced in Lebanon.

The law, known as Decree 10, allows Syria’s government to seize private property for zoned developments and compensate proven owners with shares in the new projects.

But rights groups and lawyers fear that millions of Syrians who have sought safety abroad do not have the right paperwork or enough time to claim their land.

On Saturday, Lebanon’s foreign minister Gebran Bassil said Decree 10 could adversely impact the nearly one million Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

In a letter to his Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem, Bassil expressed “Lebanon’s fear that the conditions imposed by this law will hinder the return of a not- insignificant number of displaced to their hometowns.”

Once an area is declared a new development zone under Decree 10, owners inevitably lose their property.

They can, however, get shares in the new project by proving they owned land there within 30 days of the decision being publicly announced.

“The inability for displaced to prove ownership in the provided timeframe could cause the to lose their property... and dispossess them of one of their main incentives to return to Syria,” said Bassil.