UN warns of humanitarian tragedy in country where one in four is a refugee and tens of thousands of babies are being born stateless





Syrian refugees in Lebanon are facing a crisis of “staggering proportions”, humanitarian officials have warned, with border closures breaking up families and tens of thousands of children being born stateless as well as homeless.



Refugees face a wide range of restrictions, and funding shortfalls are leaving many of them destitute, subject to extreme deprivation and exposed to exploitation, particularly women and children.

Lebanon has been largely left to fend for itself since refugees began arriving from Syria; its infrastructure is stretched to breaking point and its delicate sectarian balance upended.

“It’s the largest humanitarian tragedy of our time,” said Ninette Kelley, the UN high commissioner for refugees’ representative to Lebanon.



Lebanon has more than 1.1 million refugees – one in every four people living in Lebanon is a Syrian who fled the war. The country’s population is almost at the levels predicted for 2050.



The UNHCR says no country in living memory has taken in as many refugees in proportion to its size. “The sheer volume of the influx was staggering and over a prolonged period of time, and it came into a country that was already very fragile politically and security wise, and also economically,” Kelley told the Guardian. “It’s a very big burden on a small country.”



The deprivation is more acute for refugees in Lebanon because more than half have been displaced at least once inside Syria before fleeing here, so they arrive with very limited resources. Nearly 80% of the refugees are women and children, and a quarter of refugee households are headed by single women.

Fatima, a single mother from Aleppo whose son died earlier this year in a car accident and who now lives in a camp near the town of Zahle, was displaced from her home when the revolution came to her city. She now cares for her remaining son, a widowed sister and three teenage brothers who work to help support the family while she volunteers with other refugees and people with disabilities. “We saw some really, really hard days,” she said.

The Lebanese government has refused to build formal camps for the refugees, fearing that permanent dwellings will lead them to stay and alter the country’s sectarian balance, which distributes power between Christians, Shias and Sunnis.

As a result, informal housing settlements made of ramshackle tents have flourished in the country’s agricultural hinterland in the Bekaa Valley, and refugees living among the populace compete with them for jobs and livelihoods, exacerbating tensions.

Many children are forced to become shoe shiners, beggars or street vendors, often sleeping rough and subject to all manner of exploitation.

Security incidents and the large influx of refugees eventually prompted the Lebanese authorities to impose new restrictions, which in recent months have made it harder for refugees to make a living in the country and to renew their residency.

New visa restrictions were also imposed on Syrians entering Lebanon in the new year, an unprecedented step in a country that until the middle of the last decade was under Syrian military tutelage. Syrians now have to obtain tourism or business visas to enter, with exceptions for unspecified humanitarian cases.

The restrictions have contributed to a massive drop in refugees entering through the once bustling border post of Masna’a in the north-east of the country and subsequently registering as refugees with the UNHCR.



There is now little traffic at the border crossing in Masna’a, which was once abuzz with activity. Taxi drivers loiter in the area, waiting for a handful of customers who might cross the border.

The UN says the impact of the restrictions has been dramatic, with an 80% drop in monthly refugee registrations compared with last year.

To renew their residencies, refugees now have to pay a prohibitive $200 fee in addition to providing a notarised tenancy certificate and title of deed, a signed declaration pledging not to work and promising to return to Syria when their permits expire.

“These restrictions are highly problematic,” said Kelley, adding that many refugees could not afford the cost of renewing their permits, did not have formal lease agreements and needed to find temporary work in the local communities to survive.

“We also see that it’s exposing refugees to abuse from some unscrupulous landlords or mukhtars, who ask for favours, sexual or otherwise, in exchange for these documents,” she said. Mukhtars are local elders who function essentially as mayors in smaller communities.

An even more troubling consequence of the crisis is the emerging problem of thousands of stateless children, born in exile to Syrian parents who do not have birth certificates.

There have been about 42,000 Syrian children born in Lebanon between March 2011, when the uprising began, and November 2014. The UNHCR estimates that 70% of these babies do not have birth certificates.

That means Lebanon has almost 30,000 stateless children, born to refugee parents who cannot register them because they lack the necessary paperwork.

Syrian children in general face a dire situation in Lebanon. Though the country has committed to admitting 100,000 young Syrians into the school system, roughly 300,000 will still be out of school.



Compounding Lebanon’s troubles is the fact that few western countries have agreed to resettle refugees. European nations have said they will receive a total of 40,000.

“It is a disgrace really,” said Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which is active on the ground in Lebanon. “When some people in desperation try to flee cross the Mediterranean Sea and to Europe, we are no longer even there to save them from drowning.”

The UNHCR hopes to resettle 100,000 refugees by 2016, but has only received 13% of the funding it asked for this year. It is not the only aid organisation facing an extremely delicate budget situation. As a result, they often have to limit assistance to the neediest of refugees, with debilitating cuts to food aid and secondary healthcare leaving many refugees without basic subsistence needs and contributing to problems such as ill health, child labour and sexual exploitation.

A group of 21 humanitarian agencies, including the International Rescue Committee, the NRC, Oxfam and Save the Children have issued a damning report, titled Failing Syria, calling 2014 the worst year for civilians in the country and saying the UN security council and the warring parties in the conflict had failed to alleviate their suffering, with millions more in need of humanitarian aid.

The UNHCR is hoping that at a donor conference later this month in Kuwait countries will step forward and in particular to offer development aid to Lebanon, which faces some restrictions in receiving such assistance from international organisations because it is classified as a middle-income country.

“We do not want the world to forget that people are suffering here,” Kelley said.