Earlier this month, Lebanon's president announced that his country would soon begin sending Syrian refugees back across the border.

Lebanon hosts between 1 and 2 million Syrian refugees and last summer, Lebanese authorities said they were ready to repatriate Syrians in groups of around 15,000 every month, in cooperation with the Syrian government.

"The completion of this agreement will begin from next week, with the start of returning displaced Syrians to their country in batches," Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Twitter last week.

The announcement made global headlines and human rights organizations immediately condemned the proposed plan.

But at the same time, there was also plenty of confusion as to what Aoun was actually talking about and — perhaps more importantly — how many and which Syrian refugees would be sent back. 

'Scapegoating refugees'

Beirut-based political commentator and activist Walid Fakhreddine told DW that  President Aoun was trying to claim a "false victory" and argued: "The president's statement is about trying to claim some achievements during his term that he failed to achieve." That was a reference to the fact that Aoun will leave the job at the end of October.

Lebanese authorities have been working on plans to get Syrian refugees to return home, voluntarily and forcibly, for several years but they have mostly come to nothing.

With a population of around 4 million, Lebanon currently hosts the highest number of refugees in the world. Just under a million Syrian refugees in the country are officially registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR. There are thought to be up to a million more Syrians in the country.

This demographic imbalance, along with long running hostility among parts of the Lebanese population towards Syria, has caused tensions.

"So basically every time that there's a crisis in Lebanon — whether it's about garbage or electricity or bread — politicians scapegoat refugees to deflect from their own failures," said Aya Majzoub, researcher for Lebanon at Human Rights Watch. "So this may well just be a populist message that [Aoun] is spreading to show that he accomplished something that matters to a great many Lebanese people, before the end of his term."

Lebanon's economic crisis worsens tensions

Activists say President Aoun's statements on returning refugees could also be linked to worsening tensions between Lebanese locals and Syrian refugees, in part to a devastating economic crisis in Lebanon.

"The negativity stems from the fact that people believe [Syrian] refugees are being provided international assistance and fresh US dollars, while the Lebanese currency keeps losing value," an aid worker told DW, speaking off the record.

"There's also something of an open border with Syria and it's really difficult to keep track of who is going back and forth, who is here for protection, and how that impacts the people who can never go back because they would be at risk," the aid worker said.

"It's a massive burden for Lebanon and it's a very complex situation, and it's only going to get worse if the international community doesn't step up and help more."

On the path to voluntary returns

Despite objections by rights groups, Aoun's announcement to return refugees does not apparently apply to about sending 15,000 Syrians home every month, based on which areas Syria's  authoritarian government deemed "safe," as opposed to whether returnees would be in personal danger.

Instead, it applies to voluntary returns, first suggested by Lebanese authorities in 2018.

Human Rights Watch's Majzoub explained how the voluntary returns are supposed to work: "People sign up, [Lebanon's] General Security sends the lists [of names] to the Syrian government to see if there are any security issues. The Syrian government sends back the list of people that they don't want, and then General Security sends the rest on buses to Syria."

In an interview with DW, Issam Charafeddine, Lebanon's minister for diplaced people, confirmed this. "We started working on this issue months ago … and we presented a list of 483 families to General Security," is how he explained the most recent cases.

Can the plan work?

The plan for voluntary returns has been delayed several times due to the COVID-19 pandemic, political problems and school terms, he said, as well as what Charafeddine calls "foreign interference" — that is, the UNHCR's unwillingness to help Lebanon send Syrians back forcibly as well as protests by rights groups. 

The UNHCR itself was not "facilitating a large-scale voluntary return of refugees from Lebanon to Syria," the body's Beirut office said in a statement.

Still, Charafeddine said there are likely to be around 1,600 Syrians leaving Lebanon by the weekend in three caravans of vehicles. "The first caravan will leave for the [western Syrian] city of Qalamoun," he said. "The second will leave for Homs and the third will pass through the Masnaa border crossing towards Damascus."

"The numbers are less than expected though," he conceded. 

As yet, official programs for voluntary repatriation have not been particularly successful. It is unclear how many Syrians have returned home from Lebanon of their own free will since 2019, via government-assisted transfers, but the number appears to be in the low thousands.

No sign of forced deportations

Some Syrians in Lebanon are now worried local security forces might launch an extra campaign to accelerate repatriations, in order to make President Aoun's statement more of a reality.

But human rights organizations don't think that will happen.

"The information that we have is that General Security is not about to ramp up its activities and force refugees to go back," Diana Semaan, Amnesty International's researcher for Syria, said.

"It's a risk but it's not something we have documented so far," according to Human Rights Watch's Majzoub. "We don't have any evidence that people are being forced to sign up to return." 

Although most Syrians cannot or do not wish to return home — they don't trust the Syrian government and rights organizations have documented cases of forced conscription, imprisonment and torture for returnees — some do.

"I'm so tired of being a refugee and the emotional pressure we are living under, the poverty and humiliation," said one man, a father of four, who was planning to board the buses to Qalamoun this week. "We're not beggars, as people here call us. I'm a carpenter. I have a house back in Syria that needs repairs. But I've been living in a tent for eight years. I'll be fine in a house with no windows or doors."

A 'coercive context' for Syrian refugees

The recent statement by President Aoun may well have been self-promoting propaganda, unrelated to the more drastic plan for forced repatriations, but there are still serious concerns regarding voluntary returns.

"We don't find this plan to be about voluntary repatriation because what is pushing many of these refugees to go back are the conditions that they're living in," Semaan argued.

"Most don't have legal residency, so they’re subject to arrest or deportation," Majzoub added. "People are struggling to afford food, they don't have access to health care and tensions with host communities are continuing to increase as politicians try to deflect blame for the economic crisis onto refugees. So it's a very coercive context for Syrian refugees," she concluded. "Although many of them are not being physically coerced into returning, they feel like they have no other option."

Edited by: Sonia Phalnikar