'Injustice at its peak': Wave of expulsions plagues Syrian refugees in Lebanon

Since April, thousands have been expelled from villages as the government and municipalities intensify efforts to reduce their presence

Our journalists across the Middle East are lifting the lid on the refugee crisis and its impact. The first two parts of this series can be found here and here

Siblings Oussama and Hala sat in a stark white legal office in June, making a desperate, last-ditch effort to prevent their eviction from the northern Lebanese village of Raashine. In the lobby, at least three other Syrian families, also facing eviction, waited for legal counselling.

Oussama and Hala, both UN-registered refugees with expired residency, had lived in Raashine for the past decade. To remain in their homes they were told they would need a written rent contract from their landlord to prove the legality of their residence to the municipality. However, many landlords stopped providing rental contracts after the Lebanese state renewed pressure on municipalities and landowners to stop leasing to Syrians without residency permits.

In short, the siblings could not receive residency permits in time to produce a rental contract and had no legal recourse. They were given a week to vacate.

“It’s suffocating,” Oussama told The National of their inevitable expulsion. “They make it difficult for us to renew our residencies because they don’t want Syrians in Lebanon. The goal is to prevent us from living here."

By late June, Oussama, Hala and their respective families were among at least 150 evicted people forced to sleep in the streets. They spent the days sleeping next to the very apartments they'd been evicted from as they searched for alternative housing.

They are part of a much larger wave of expulsions, with at least 3,865 Syrians being forcibly evicted from Lebanese villages since April, according to the Access Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), which monitors and documents human rights abuse of Syrian refugees displaced by the war in their country.

“But the real number could be much higher,” said Mohammad Hasan, director of ACHR. “Our capacity to know the real number is limited. To give you an example, the UN counted 13,000 deportations in 2023, while we had only verified around 1,000, so the numbers are much higher than our capacity to survey."

The National sought updated eviction numbers and comment from the Lebanese army, General Security and the Interior Minister but received no response.

Since 2015, when the Lebanese government asked the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to stop registering new Syrian arrivals, restrictions on Syrians in Lebanon have progressively tightened. According to UN estimates, about 83 per cent of Syrians in Lebanon now lack access to legal residency, facing numerous bureaucratic and legal hurdles. Even further residency restrictions were announced in May by Lebanon’s General Security agency, coinciding with the government-sponsored crackdown on the large Syrian refugee population.

The restrictions followed the killing of local official Pascal Sleiman, attributed to a Syrian criminal gang. Ordinary Syrians immediately felt the brunt of the political and societal backlash.

Overnight, checkpoints were set up throughout the country to detain Syrians living without residency permits or driving in unregistered vehicles, while many municipalities imposed eviction notices. ACHR and other human rights groups view the restrictive campaign against Syrians as a deliberate effort to pressure them into leaving Lebanon – an opinion barely challenged by many Lebanese leaders.

Lebanese politicians have long scapegoated the country's Syrian refugee community – estimated to number about 1.5 million – blaming them as a major source of Lebanon's problems despite the country's decades of political mismanagement and neglect.

A desperate situation

“I was out buying bread and my wife had taken our youngest to the doctor,” Oussama told The National of the morning he, his wife and their seven children were evicted.

The eviction took place in the morning while some of his children were still asleep. When he returned from the shop, he witnessed authorities “sealing the doors shut while the kids and all our stuff were still inside. They threatened to drag our belongings out and set them on fire if we tried to re-open the door."

Oussama had to pull his children out of the house through a window. The family spent the next three nights sleeping on the concrete outside the property. Eventually, he negotiated with the municipality and his landlord to unseal the house to retrieve their belongings.

When The National visited the family, they were removing furniture from what had been their apartment, preparing for a move. Oussama's sons hauled their belongings out of the apartment and onto the scorching concrete. Nearby, his wife nursed their infant son under the shade of a tree. Their neighbours, many of them relatives – including Hala and her family – were taking turns loading their belongings into a large truck.

“We don’t know where we’re going,” Oussama said. “We're scattering. It’s up to luck. Some families found places in nearby municipalities. Some are going to Akkar. We still haven’t found anywhere to go.”

In the Zgharta district, where Raashine is located, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s (NRC) legal office has been overwhelmed by Syrians seeking help since residents began receiving eviction notices.

The Lebanese government’s controversial plan calls for governorates and municipalities to “enumerate and register” displaced Syrians, stop leasing land to those without legal residency and discourage employers from hiring them, effectively pushing Syrians out district by district. However, the plan is being interpreted and implemented differently across municipalities, mayors and legal experts told The National. Some officials, such as those in Zgharta, have pursued evictions aggressively, while others are more lenient.

“The [Interior Ministry’s] order is being interpreted arbitrarily depending on the municipality,” said NRC lawyer Elie Bitar, who advises Syrians with residency and housing issues. Although NRC’s legal office provides legal counselling and assistance to Syrians in the area, the lawyer admitted options for most Syrians are “extremely limited” due to the prohibitive residency process, as was the case with Oussama and Hala.

For example, although Oussama is a UN-registered refugee, he lost his status after accepting a work sponsorship to support his family. When the sponsorship expired and he was unable to switch work sponsors due to tightened restrictions, Oussama became trapped: unable to return to Syria and doomed to remain illegal in Lebanon.

“This is injustice at its peak,” he lamented.

‘Like a game of tag’

Mass expulsions of Syrians have been reported across Lebanon since April, from Akkar to Zgharta.

As recently as late August, the Governor of North Lebanon, Judge Ramzi Nahra, instructed State Security to expel illegal Syrians from 31 towns in Lebanon's Batroun district.

Zaani Khair, president of municipalities in Zgharta district, which Raashine village falls under, said they were “following the orders of the Interior Ministry” but admitted the eviction campaign has been chaotic and inconsistent, with refugees moving from village to village like "a game of tag”.

The state lacks the resources to conduct a centralised survey. It is a critique levelled by rights groups, as well as the very municipal employees who implement the government plan, who charge that at best, the policy merely displaces Syrians from village to village.

In Raashine alone, about 150 of the village’s 250 Syrian occupants were evicted, including Hala. She moved to the neighbouring town of Miryata, where she and her children shared an overpriced basement apartment with her brother Mohammad’s family.

At $300 a month, not including utilities, the two-room basement apartment was more than triple the price she had been paying in Raashine. To afford it, she split the rent with her brother Mohammad. When The National visited them, 12 people were living in the apartment. Oussama joined them a few weeks later after sending most of his family to Akkar, hoping it would double their chances of finding stable work or an affordable apartment to rent.

A month later, in August, the family received eviction orders from Miryata municipality – and had to move again.