Dec 26, 2017

The number of registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon has dropped to below one million for the first time since 2014, the United Nations told AFP on Tuesday.

As of the end of November, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) counted 997,905 Syrian refugees -- a vast majority of them women and children -- registered in Lebanon.

"The number reached one million in April 2014, and this is the first time it drops below that," UNHCR spokeswoman Lisa Abou Khaled told AFP.

Numbers were decreasing, Abou Khaled said, as refugees had resettled in third countries, returned to their homes in Syria, or passed away.

From 2011 until September this year, nearly 49,000 Syrians left Lebanon as part of the United Nations' resettlement programme to third countries including the United States, Sweden, and France.