Rules Refugees Live By

Piecing together the what it means to be a refugee is complicated. Even though the UN oversees and manages services for refugees, the host country has a great deal to say about where refugees are located, employment possibilities and restrictions, and access for services.

Since arriving, Max and I have been told all sorts of things about refugee life. Confounding, contradictory, and very often unverifiable rules have been reported. But everything we hear confirms that refugees continue to suffer and that few possibilities exist for the future if they stay in this country.

So I thought I would provide a limited overview of some of the regulatory challenges the refugees face in Lebanon. I have tried to verify and clarify as best I can but I make no guarantees for 100% accuracy. 

A reminder that the Lebanese government has been deeply impacted by the refugee crisis. More than 1/3 of their population are now Syrians. Also, Lebanon is not a signatory to the 1951 U.N. Convention on the Status of Refugees, largely due to the presence of long-term Palestinian refugees. Also, there are historic tensions between Lebanon and Syria due to complicated and uneven responses by both sides during the Lebanese Civil War and subsequent regional conflicts. 

To deal with the current crisis, in 2015, the Lebanese government introduced new residency policies that have caused an estimated 70 percent of the nearly 2 million Syrian refugees to lose legal status. Let's unpack what this means:

Lebanese Residency Permit

Residency Requirements: Prior to 2015, Syrians were able to openly cross the border into Lebanon without visas and had the ability to renew their residency without cost. Since January 2015, any Syrian refugee who is registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)) must establish legal residency in Lebanon and pay a $200 annual fee. If they cannot pay, and most cannot, they loose legal status that puts them at risk of raids, arrest, and deportation. 
This also makes them vulnerable to exploitation without the legal recourse of being able to turn to authorities for assistance and protection. 

This is a big problem for babies born to refugee families. As refugees, they cannot return to Syria to register their children as Syrian citizens and they are unable to establish legal identity for their children in Lebanon. So these babies are without identity papers of any kind, including a prized birth certificate. This impacts their ability to return to Syria and/or to emigrate to other countries with their parents. Hundreds of thousands of children fall into this "no status" category.

Restriction of Movement:  All Syrians are subject to increased scrutiny at the security checkpoints throughout the country. But for refugees, if they return to Syria for any reason, they cannot return to Lebanon. This means they cannot visit family members who are ill or dying, check on their properties, or permanently go back home - even if the fighting in their area has stopped.

Protests in Beirut about Refugee Curfews

Banner Announcing a Curfew

Many cities impose curfews on Syrians. Here is Zahlé, the curfew is 6 pm. 

Ability to Work:  Refugees must sign a "no-work" pledge to maintain their residency status. If they break the law and find under-the-table work, the only work options open to them are in the agriculture, construction and cleaning service sectors. Average monthly income is $277, far below the minimum wage of $448. Nighty-two percent of refugees work without official permits.

A young girl with severe deformity of the spine.

She cannot walk and surgery is not an option here.

Access to Healthcare:  The conditions in the camps are unsanitary. Many children and adults have a variety of respiratory issues, skin conditions, infections, and diarrhea. Refugee medical care is administrated by the UNHCR. but the cost of assessment, care, and treatment is prohibitively high. What UNHCR underwrites is very restrictive. Chronic conditions are not covered - only urgent, acute and life-threatening problems are covered.  

Most of the babies I have seen were born at home because the mothers have no access to pre or post natal care. Only in the case of a life-threatening birth would an ambulance be called, and even then, the family would have no ability to pay. Any medical attention they receive is from volunteer nurses and physicians who enter the camps to provide very basic services.  

Boys in the camp who showed me their homework
They attend the school run by the local Baptist church

Access to Education: Hundreds of thousands of children have no access to education. This means few are literate or able to do simple math. With parents who are constrained by their legal status or inability to find work, many children move into the informal workforce. They work in the fields, beg on the streets, and sell trinkets for pennies. The public school system in Lebanon was already strained before the war. Now, with the influx of refugee children, they simply don't have the resources to educate these children. Since qualified teachers from Syria are barred from working, informal and rudimentary schools are springing up in near the camps. I'll write more about this in a later post.