📋 Tender Overview
The Lebanese Armed Forces and Cypriot authorities are acting together to prevent Syrian refugees from reaching Europe and then return them to Syria where they face grave danger, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 90-page report, “I Can't Go Home, Stay Here, or Leave”: Pushbacks and Pullbacks of Syrian Refugees from Cyprus and Lebanon, ” explains why Syrian refugees in Lebanon are desperate to reach Europe, and how the Lebanese military prevents them from doing so and then summarily returns them to Syria. At the same time, the Cypriot coastguard and other Cypriot security forces have returned Syrians whose boats have reached Cyprus to Lebanon, without regard to their refugee status or the risk that they will subsequently be returned to Syria. Indeed, many of those returned to Lebanon by the Cypriot authorities have been immediately expelled to Syria by the Lebanese military.
Human Rights Watch interviewed 16 Syrian refugees who attempted to leave Lebanon by boat irregularly between August 2021 and September 2023. Human Rights Watch also viewed and verified the authenticity of photos and videos submitted by these individuals, reviewed aircraft and ship tracking data to corroborate their accounts, and submitted freedom of information requests to see documents related to European Union project funding. The cases documented by Human Rights Watch only cover the period between August 2021 and September 2023, but Lebanon confirmed to Human Rights Watch that in April 2024 it had expelled Syrians who had been turned back by Cypriot authorities, and publicly announced further interceptions in August 2024.
“By preventing Syrian refugees from leaving to seek safety elsewhere and then forcibly returning them to Syria, Lebanon is violating the fundamental prohibition on returning a refugee to a place where they will face persecution, while the European Union helps foot the bill ,” said Nadia Hardman , refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “ Cyprus is also violating this prohibition by pushing refugees back to Lebanon, where they risk being returned to Syria, despite the dangers they would face there. ”
The EU and its Member States have provided various Lebanese security authorities with funding totalling €16.7 million from 2020 to 2023, to implement border control projects mainly aimed at increasing Lebanon’s capacity to reduce irregular migration. In May 2024, the EU announced €1 billion in financial assistance to Lebanon until the end of 2027, part of which is earmarked “ for the Lebanese Armed Forces and other security forces, through equipment and training in border management and combating migrant smuggling ”.
Human Rights Watch shared its findings with 12 relevant entities, including the governments of Lebanon and Cyprus, EU institutions, and private entities, and requested their comments. Ten of them responded.
Cypriot authorities have collectively expelled hundreds of Syrian asylum seekers without providing them with access to regular asylum procedures, forcing them onto boats that took them directly to Lebanon. Deportees have claimed that Lebanese army officers handed them over directly to Syrian military personnel and unidentified armed men inside Syrian territory.
A 44-year-old Syrian woman said that when the Cypriot coastguard stopped the boat she was on, officers “ started grabbing the passengers and forcing them ” onto the returning vessel, and “ used a taser and a baton ” on her husband. “ Blood was coming out of his nose and mouth, everywhere ,” she said. Once back in Lebanon, she added, “ the army took us from the port … to a buffer zone between the [Syrian and Lebanese] borders … telling us to run to the other side. ” She said the Syrian army held her and her family members for nine days.
Back in Syria, the expelled refugees not only risked detention by the Syrian army, but also extortion by armed men demanding payment to smuggle them back into Lebanon.
Lebanon is the country hosting the largest number of refugees in the world, including 1.5 million Syrians, compared to its own citizens; at the same time, Lebanon faces multiple cumulative crises that have created difficult socio-economic conditions for all people living in the country. These conditions contribute to the circumstances that push many Syrian refugees to attempt to flee to Europe. With no legal migration pathways and fears of persecution in Syria, many of the people we interviewed said that illegal boat crossings were their only available option to move towards a normal and safe life.
Lebanon's General Directorate of General Security ( DGSG ), which controls entry into the country and the residency status of foreigners, said it intercepted and in some cases expelled 821 Syrians who attempted to leave Lebanon by boat between January 1, 2022 and August 1, 2024.
In one such case, the Lebanese army, in a joint rescue operation with the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, rescued 200 passengers from a sinking boat and brought them back to the Lebanese port of Tripoli on 1 January 2023. The army then summarily expelled these Syrians through the Wadi Khaled border crossing in northern Lebanon. Interviewees said that they repeatedly pleaded with Lebanese soldiers and UN officers not to take them back to Lebanon, as they feared they would be deported back to Syria.
Interviewees whose boats were able to reach Cypriot territorial waters described how Cypriot coastguard vessels used dangerous tactical maneuvers to intercept the boats. The coastguard also intercepted a boat and left it adrift overnight without providing food or other assistance to those on board. Cypriot officers tied the wrists of an unaccompanied 15-year-old boy with cable and put him on a Cypriot ship that took him directly to the port of Beirut. The Lebanese army then immediately expelled the boy, along with a group of other Syrians, through the Masnaa border crossing on the Syrian border.
