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“I Can’t Go Home, Stay Here, or Leave”Pushbacks and Pullbacks of Syrian Refugees from Cyprus and Lebanon
Summary
To escape war, Nawal fled Syria with her husband and seven children in 2013 and sought asylum in Lebanon, where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) registered her and her family as refugees. However, the family soon found themselves having to escape something else: coercive policies that deprived them of legal status, work, and education, anti-Syrian sentiments, and a debilitating economic collapse in 2019. Seeing no hope for a normal life or securing asylum in Lebanon, and unable to travel via authorized channels, Nawal and her family decided to board an irregular boat bound for the Republic of Cyprus (Cyprus) in June 2023.
They failed in their first attempt. While still on a beach in northern Lebanon trying to board the boat, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) arrested Nawal, her family, and 47 other people trying to escape Lebanon. After half a day in detention, the authorities released them; but no one explained to Nawal the grounds for her detention, and what laws she broke that warranted such treatment.
A month later in July 2023, Nawal and her family tried again, and this time their boat made it out of Lebanon. As they approached Cyprus, a drone and a helicopter surveilled them; military vessels shadowed them as they landed. Cypriot authorities detained Nawal and others on the boat upon arrival and denied them any chance to claim asylum. After nearly two days of detention, Cypriot officers pushed and shoved the group onto a Cypriot vessel. The vessel returned directly to Beirut port. Several hours after they disembarked, the LAF expelled those who were Syrians to Syria via the Masnaa border crossing between Beirut and Damascus, including Nawal and her family. Ten years after fleeing the war, Nawal and her family were back in Syria.
Soon after, the Syrian army detained Nawal’s family in the border area neighboring Lebanon and detained them for nine days before releasing them in Damascus. Human Rights Watch has documented previous cases in which returning Syrians who are detained have been persecuted, tortured, and, in some cases, killed, by Syrian government forces. Nawal’s family was fortunate to be released, and they managed to pay smugglers to return to Lebanon in August 2023.
The migration context for Syrian refugees in Lebanon is complex. Lebanon hosts the highest population of refugees per capita in the world, including an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees who fled the civil war that began in 2011 and nearly a half million Palestinian refugees. At the same time, Lebanon’s government has failed to address the needs of its own citizens amid multiple compounding crises, let alone the Syrian refugee population which has already long been subjected to coercive measures and discriminatory restrictions. Lacking legal migration pathways, unbearable conditions are driving many Syrian refugees to leave for Europe, particularly Cyprus given its proximity to the Lebanon coast, by boats that do not depart from or enter official ports.
In response, Lebanon, Cyprus, and the European Union (EU) are pursuing a policy of containment. In 2023, UNHCR said it was “aware of at least 19 deportation incidents [in Lebanon] involving 932 people related to attempted onward boat movements;” in 2024 as of July, it identified that “6 [Cyprus-bound boats] were returned to Lebanon and 5 were intercepted by the Lebanese authorities.” Cyprus has regularly pushed back Syrian refugees to Lebanon as early as 2020, which Human Rights Watch documented; repeatedly proposed to hold joint patrols with the Lebanese navy to stem any onward movement of irregular boats; and has, since late 2023, called for the EU to declare parts of Syria safe for refugee returns. On April 13, 2024, Cyprus announced that it had suspended asylum processing for all Syrians currently in Cyprus.
Meanwhile, the EU and European states have provided millions of euros in training, equipment, and capacity-building support to Lebanon to boost its border management capabilities. This culminated in May 2024, when the EU Commission announced a €1 billion financial assistance package for Lebanon, with one of the express goals being to strengthen the Lebanese army’s “border and migration management.” Announcing the package at a joint press conference with the Cypriot President and Lebanese Prime Minister, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called on Lebanon to “prevent illegal migration.”
As governments create ever more complex policies to contain Syrian refugees, the resulting reality for Nawal and many like her is brutally simple: they are trapped in perpetual vulnerability in Lebanon.
Between November 2023 and March 2024, Human Rights Watch interviewed 16 Syrian refugees and asylum seekers who had tried to leave Lebanon irregularly by boat. All attempted boat crossings between August 2021 and September 2023. Interviewees described the boats as carrying between 17 and 200 people, typically mostly Syrians, but with some Lebanese nationals and Palestinians. Many of the interviewees said that the boats’ intended destination was Cyprus.
Human Rights Watch analyzed and verified photographs and videos sent directly to its researchers from interviewees, which revealed the horrifying experience of encounters with the Lebanese and Cypriot authorities at sea. Human Rights Watch also acquired aircraft and boat tracking data to trace and document the interdiction and expulsion of an interviewee by the Cypriot Coast Guard. These analyses enabled researchers to corroborate witness accounts and to understand the boat journeys, including their lengths, locations, and when other vehicles involved in the eventual expulsions to Lebanon intervened.
Interviewees told Human Rights Watch that Lebanese security agencies conducted “pullbacks” – actions that force the return of outgoing boats or otherwise prevent people from leaving a country outside of official border crossings. Those who reached Cyprus said the Cypriot authorities collectively expelled Syrian refugees and forcibly returned them to Lebanon. In most cases, the LAF detained and then summarily expelled Syrian refugees to Syria following pullbacks in Lebanon and collective expulsions from Cyprus. Interviewees said Lebanese and Cypriot authorities never provided any clear justification, legal or otherwise, for their treatment and denied them access to international protection procedures.
Overall, 15 interviewees, including many who had made multiple crossing attempts, suffered human rights violations at the hands of Lebanese and/or Cypriot authorities. Lebanese security authorities arrested nine of the interviewees either at or on the way to boat departure points in beaches and coastal areas in north Lebanon. Lebanese authorities detained them and summarily expelled four of the nine arrested interviewees to Syria via the informal border crossing in the Wadi Khaled area of northern Lebanon.
Eight interviewees were on a boat carrying around 200 passengers, which sank several hours after setting off from the northern coast of Lebanon on December 31, 2022, in a widely reported incident that involved a joint rescue operation by the Lebanese navy and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon. Interviewees said they repeatedly pleaded with both Lebanese navy and UNIFIL officers not to send them back to Lebanon because they feared expulsion to Syria. Following the rescue, Lebanese navy and UNIFIL vessels carried the survivors back to Lebanon’s Tripoli port. The LAF then detained them at the port for a day where different Lebanese authorities questioned them. Seven interviewees reported that, after the questioning was over, the LAF took them from the port to the Wadi Khaled crossing and expelled them to Syria. Most of them were barefoot and wet throughout the entire rescue and expulsion sequence, which lasted over a day.
Five interviewees said they reached Cyprus on four different boats. In one case, Cypriot authorities intercepted an interviewee’s boat and left it drifting overnight without bringing the people ashore or offering them food. The authorities then transferred the people to a Cypriot vessel and returned them to Beirut port. In two cases, interviewees’ boats were intercepted by Cypriot Coast Guards, including by using maneuvering tactics that put the one of the interviewees’ boats in danger, as shown in videos one interviewee sent to Human Rights Watch. In another case, an interviewee who was an unaccompanied, 15-year-old child asylum seeker landed on Cypriot shores undetected. Interviewees in these three cases ended up spending one to two nights in Cypriot detention centers but were not given the opportunity to claim asylum. Cypriot officers then forced the interviewees, including by zip-tying their hands and shoving them onto Cypriot vessels that returned them directly to Beirut port. Four of the interviewees, including the child, were expelled by the Lebanese army to Syria via the Masnaa border crossing.
Interviewees also described a myriad of abuses throughout the cycle of pull and pushbacks and expulsions. Both Lebanese and Cypriot authorities used excessive force at the time of arrest and during detention, including beatings, body restraints, and verbal insults. Nawal said Cypriot officers beat her husband with a baton and tasered him while forcing him onto the vessel back to Lebanon. Interviewees expelled to the Wadi Khaled informal crossing described that, in some cases, LAF officers handed them directly to Syrian soldiers and smugglers who threatened to hand them over to the Syrian army unless they paid for smuggling services to return to Lebanon. Several interviewees reported that the Lebanese authorities confiscated their identification documents and phones during pullbacks and detention and did not return them.
The chain of responses from Lebanon and Cyprus against irregular boat migration violates multiple human rights. The pullbacks as conducted by Lebanon violate the prohibitions on arbitrary detention, on inhuman treatment and the right to leave any country, under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Cyprus is bound by the European Convention on Human Rights which prohibits collective expulsions – the removal of a group of “aliens” from a country without an objective, individualized assessment. Lebanon’s summary expulsion of pulled-back and Cyprus-expelled Syrians violates the principle of nonrefoulement under customary international law, the Convention against Torture, and the ICCPR, which prohibits the return of refugees to places where their lives or freedom would be threatened. Cyprus is also violating the prohibition on indirect, chain, or secondary refoulement, by expelling Syrian refugees to Lebanon where they risk onward expulsion to Syria.
At the same time as Lebanese authorities perpetrated these violations, the EU and European countries had funded those authorities with as much as €16.7 million from 2020 to 2023, mainly in the form of capacity-building projects explicitly aimed at enhancing Lebanon’s ability to prevent irregular migration. On August 1, 2024, the EU allocated a further €32 million to continue implementing border management enhancement projects in Lebanon through 2025.
Human Rights Watch examined project documents obtained through public sources and freedom of information requests. It found that European entities had funded the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), an external think tank not subject to EU human rights frameworks, to implement projects for the benefit of the LAF, GSO, and ISF. The ICMPD provided the three agencies with technical advice, trainings, equipment and infrastructure, to enhance Lebanon’s border management capabilities. The ICMPD even facilitated expertise exchanges in border practices between the border agencies of Lebanon and Tunisia, another country whose security forces have been found by Human Rights Watch to have committed serious abuses against refugees and asylum seekers, including pullbacks and collective expulsions, while receiving significant EU funding.
Yet, those ICMPD projects did not include any independent monitoring or funding termination mechanisms to ensure European funding did not enable human rights violations. Despite the European Commission in both 2023 and 2024 identifying that its Lebanon projects risked benefiting actors which “may act against international Human Rights standards,” it doubled project funding through 2025 without corresponding enhancement to its approach in addressing and remedying continued reports of human rights violations by EU-funded Lebanese security actors.
Human Rights Watch calls on Lebanon and Cyprus to end all abusive, illegal border measures that trap people in Lebanon and prevent them from leaving and accessing international protection. Lebanon should end the use of arrest, detention and expulsion as threatened or effectuated punishment for irregular migration. Cyprus should cease all pushbacks and collective expulsions and allow people to claim international protection upon entering the country, including by immediately resuming asylum processing for Syrians. In reaching any decision that may result in detention or expulsion, both countries must afford people due process, and respect their nonrefoulement obligations. Both countries should refrain from directly or indirectly returning Syrians to places where they may be harmed by Syrian security agencies and other armed groups.
Human Rights Watch also calls on the EU and other donor countries to immediately establish mechanisms to ensure their financial support to Lebanon does not perpetuate or contribute to violations of the right of anyone to seek asylum and not to be returned to places where their lives or freedom would be threatened, or otherwise enable violations of international standards for the treatment of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees. Such mechanisms should include, at the minimum, independent and ongoing human rights impact assessment and the conditioning of funding on Lebanon’s compliance with relevant international human rights obligations.
Finally, Human Rights Watch calls on all governments involved in the hosting or resettlement of Syrians, including Lebanon, the EU and European States, to refrain from continuing an inhumane containment approach to migration which only exacerbates the human rights abuses that drive more irregular journeys. As a priority, Lebanon should end all discriminatory and coercive measures against Syrians, reform residency regulations so that Syrians can regularize their status in the country, and allow UNHCR to resume registering Syrian refugees. Lebanon should work with destination governments and the UNHCR to significantly increase options for Syrian refugees to secure access to safe and legal means of onward travel, including by providing refugees’ with the necessary documents for safe outward travel through official ports and border crossings. European and other governments should make more resources available to support Syrians in Lebanon, including increasing refugee resettlement places and complementary pathways, including for work, study and family reunion, for their safe, legal, and orderly migration.
Glossary
Aliens: The term “alien” is used in article 4 of Protocol No. 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights to refer to non-nationals of a host country, or foreigners. Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 prohibits the “collective expulsion of aliens.” It is used in the report only when referring to this legal prohibition under the convention.
Asylum seeker: An asylum seeker is a person who hopes to gain refuge in another country. If a refugee arrives in a country and formally seeks asylum – the right to stay in the country to avoid being sent back to danger in their homeland – that person remains an asylum seeker pending a decision on their case.
Collective expulsions: Collective expulsions are measures that compel foreigners, as a group, to leave a country, without a prior reasonable and objective examination of the particular case of each individual in the group. Collective expulsions are prohibited by the European Convention on Human Rights.
Nonrefoulement: As set out by the UN, the principle of nonrefoulement prohibits states from transferring or removing individuals from their jurisdiction or effective control when there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be at risk of irreparable harm upon return, including persecution, torture, ill-treatment or other serious human rights violations. This principle applies to all migrants at all times, irrespective of migration status.
Pullbacks: Pullbacks are any measures taken by countries of origin or transit, without clear justification, to (1) prevent people from physically leaving the territories of those countries, or (2) return people to those territories before they can reach the jurisdiction of their destination countries. Pullbacks can take place on land or at sea, including the interception of departing boats, and the apprehension of people attempting to leave either at or on their way to official or unofficial border departure points.
Pushbacks: Pushbacks are measures that prevent people from reaching, entering, or remaining in a particular territory, usually resulting in people being forced back to the country from where their journey originated. Pushbacks can take place on land or at sea, and typically occur without allowing people to lodge asylum claims or otherwise access international protection.
Refugee: Generally, a refugee is a person who has been forced to flee their country because of persecution, war, or violence. Under the 1951 Refugee Convention, a refugee is someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their home country because of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, or political opinion. Regardless of whether a country is party to the Refugee Convention, under the customary international law principle of nonrefoulement governments are prohibited from forcibly returning refugees to their home country if it would place them in danger.
Summary expulsions: Summary expulsions are measures that forcibly remove individuals from the country in which they are physically present, without a prior legal decision made in accordance with due process guarantees required by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Methodology
This report is based on a total of 28 interviews, including with Syrians, representatives of international organizations, and lawyers, analysis of photographs, videos and other documents, and other secondary sources. This report focuses on Syrian refugees attempting boat crossings – the plight of Lebanese nationals faced with a poor economy and lack of opportunities leaving the country irregularly by boat are not within the purview of this report.[1]
Human Rights Watch interviewed 16 Syrians (three women, twelve men, and one boy) who attempted to leave Lebanon by boat between August 2021 and September 2023. Eleven interviews were in-person, conducted in Lebanon in January and February 2024. Five interviews were conducted by telephone. All interviews were conducted with interpreters who translated from Arabic to English.
All interviews, including phone interviews, were conducted in private settings – either completely alone or with the interviewee’s immediate family members present – with assurances of confidentiality. The researchers informed all interviewees about the purpose and voluntary nature of the interviews, and the ways in which Human Rights Watch would use the information. All were told they could decline to answer questions or could end the interview at any time.
Researchers told interviewees they would receive no payment, service, or other personal benefit for the interviews. Transport costs for interviewees in Lebanon who had to travel to a safe location were covered to a maximum limit of US$10. Where appropriate, Human Rights Watch provided interviewees with contact information for organizations offering humanitarian, legal, social, or counseling services.
To protect confidentiality, pseudonyms are used for all interviewees.
Human Rights Watch also spoke with seven representatives of nongovernmental organizations working with Syrian refugees, a Lebanese lawyer, and the Lebanon offices of two United Nations organizations and two humanitarian agencies.
Human Rights Watch analyzed photographs, videos and documents which reveal experiences of people fleeing from Lebanon by boat, including toward Cyprus, sent directly by interviewees to researchers. In one case, researchers used aircraft tracking data to trace the route of a search and rescue helicopter from the website adsbexchange.com. In the same incident, researchers acquired boat tracking data to document the movement of a privately owned vessel involved in transporting an interviewee from the coast of Cyprus to the Port of Beirut. Being able to track this one journey in detail not only enabled researchers to corroborate the witness account but also to understand the journey itself, its length, and where and when the other vehicles involved in the eventual pullback to Lebanon intervened.
To analyze the European Union and European States’ funding policies related to border management in Lebanon, Human Rights Watch submitted document access requests to the European Commission, Frontex, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration, under their respective transparency legislation frameworks. The requests seek access to documents generated from Jan 1, 2022 to present and related to border management capacity-building projects funded by the above-named entities for the benefit of Lebanon, including funding agreements, action plans, regular reports provided to the funding entities, and lists of equipment and other support provided to Lebanon. Frontex, and the Dutch and Swiss authorities have responded to the requests, providing documents which they deemed response to the requests, in redacted form. The European Commission has to-date only provided four documents with heavy redactions, while the bulk of
Human Rights Watch’s request remains outstanding.
Human Rights Watch sent letters to authorities and entities named in this report setting out our findings and posing a series of questions with assurances that answers would be reflected in the final report. On May 16, 2024, Human Rights Watch wrote to the Cyprus Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Justice and Public Order. On June 18, 2024, Minister Konstantinos Ioannou, on behalf of the Ministry of Interior, provided a letter of response dated June 13, 2024. On July 19, 2024, the Ministry of Justice and Public Order notified Human Rights Watch by email that it would adopt the content of Minister Ioannou’s letter as its response.
On July 19, 2024, Human Rights Watch wrote to Lebanon’s Lebanese Armed Forces, Internal Security Forces, and General Security Organization. On August 13, 2024, the General Security Organization provided a letter of response. On August 23, 2024, the Internal Security Forces provided a letter of response. At time of publication, the Lebanese Armed Forces had not responded.
On July 23, 2024, Human Rights Watch wrote to the EU’s Directorate-General for Neighborhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR) and Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs (DG HOME). Letters of response were provided by Francisco Joaquin Gaztelu Mezquiriz, Director of DG NEAR’s Neighborhood South and Türkiye Unit, on August 20, 2024, and by Beate Gminder, Acting Director-General of DG HOME, on August 22, 2024.
On July 30, 2024, Human Rights Watch wrote to the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD). On August 16, 2024, Ralph Genetzke, Director of ICMPD’s Brussels Mission, provided a letter of response.
On July 31, 2024, Human Rights Watch wrote to the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex). On September 2, 2024, Frontex provided a letter of response.
On July 31, 2024, Human Rights Watch wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. On
August 30, 2024, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs provided a response.
On July 31, 2024, Human Rights Watch wrote to Switzerland’s Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, and the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM). On August 20, 2024, Christine Schraner Burgener, State Secretary for SEM, provided a letter of response.
On July 31, 2024, Human Rights Watch wrote to the Ledra Ena Shipping Company (CY) Ltd. The same day, a member of the company reached out to a Human Rights Watch researcher by WhatsApp acknowledging receipt of the letter, and in the course of exchanges about the purpose of the letter, said that any questions were more appropriately addressed to the government. At time of publication, the Ledra Ena Shipping Company (CY) Ltd. had not provided any further response to the letter.
I. Background
In 2024, Lebanon continues to host the highest number of refugees per capita in the world, including an estimated 1.5 million refugees fleeing human rights violations in Syria and the civil war that began there in 2011.[2]
Lebanon initially maintained an open-door policy to Syrians seeking refuge, but does not recognize them as refugees, and regards any form of local integration of Syrians as unconstitutional.[3] In official documents and statements, it uses naziheen, the generic word for “displaced” people in Arabic, rather than laji’een, the word for refugee.[4] Further, Lebanon is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and does not adhere to a unified or centralized policy toward Syrian refugees.
In the last several years, the Lebanese authorities have failed to address multiple compounding crises including an economic collapse marked by inflation, political instability, a massive deadly explosion in Beirut’s port in August 2020, and the Covid-19 pandemic. While the socio-economic insecurity of the past several years has devastated all populations in Lebanon, Syrian refugees have been severely impacted. Latest figures from UN humanitarian agencies show that, as of 2024, 75 percent of Syrian refugee households in Lebanon live in extreme poverty, that is, below the “Survival and Minimum Expenditure Basket.”[5]
Syrian refugees also face coercive measures adopted by the Lebanese government, designed to deter and reduce Syrian presence in the country. In May 2019, the Higher Defense Council, Lebanon’s highest security coordination body, adopted a series of measures including a decree that facilitates the summary removal of Syrians to Syria.[6] Multiple Lebanese human rights organizations criticized the Council’s measures and decrees as unconstitutional, as they purported to authorize the deportation of Syrians who entered Lebanon irregularly after April 2019 without a formal written decision, without trial, and without prior consideration of whether the deportation would violate the individual’s right to nonrefoulement.[7] From 2019 to 2023, Human Rights Watch has documented or followed accounts of summary removals/refoulement to Syria,[8] demolition of refugee shelters,[9] arbitrary arrests and raids including crackdowns on Syrians working without authorization,[10] and ad-hoc curfew and checkpoints that applied only to Syrians.[11]
Crucially, the General Directorate of General Security (GSO), Lebanon’s intelligence agency that controls entry and residency status for foreigners in the country, has imposed residency renewal regulations so prohibitive that as of 2024, only 20 percent of Syrian refugees still maintain legal residency status in Lebanon.[12] Legal residency rates for Syrian women (14 percent) are concerningly low compared to men (24.5 percent), and 69 percent of Syrian households report not having any member with valid legal residency.[13] The GSO has also since 2015 barred UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, from registering Syrian refugees. Syrians without legal residency are particularly vulnerable in Lebanon. They cannot move freely through checkpoints across the country, face additional risks of detention and deportation or expulsion, and are severely restricted in accessing employment and basic services such as healthcare and education.[14]
As Lebanon goes to extreme lengths to force out Syrian refugees, Syria remains unsafe for return. UNHCR continues to maintain that there should be no forced returns to Syria.[15] In 2021, Human Rights Watch documented how, based on interviews with 65 returning Syrians from Lebanon and Jordan, returnees faced arbitrary detention, kidnapping, torture, and killings at the hands of Syrian security agencies – the same violations that drove many to participate in the protest movement and eventually flee in the first place.[16] As recently as July 2023, Human Rights Watch documented returnees being tortured in Syrian military intelligence’s custody and forcibly conscripted into Syria’s military reserve force.[17] Despite the real risk of persecution and harm on return, Lebanon has intensified expulsion efforts as UNHCR recorded 13,772 individuals expelled from Lebanon or pushed back at the Syrian border in 2023 alone.[18]
II. Boat Migration from Lebanon
The increasingly hostile conditions for Syrians in Lebanon coincide with a period when attempts to leave Lebanon by irregular sea crossings – on boats departing outside of official ports of entry and exit – have been on the rise. In 2021, UNHCR recorded 38 attempted movements by sea involving 1,570 individuals;[19] in 2022, 55 attempts involving 4,629 individuals;[20] in 2023, 65 attempts involving 3,921 individuals;[21] and in 2024 as of July, 61 attempts all aiming to reach Cyprus, involving 2,541 individuals.[22] According to UNHCR and accounts from people interviewed for this report, most of those attempting irregular sea departures from Lebanon have been Syrians;[23] others have included Palestinians and Lebanese nationals.
Meanwhile, efforts by Lebanon and Cyprus to stem boat crossings are equally intensifying. In 2023, UNHCR noted it was “aware of at least 19 deportation incidents involving 932 people related to attempted onward boat movements” in Lebanon;[24] while in January to July 2024, UNHCR said “50 boats reached Cyprus, carrying 2,541 passengers, while 6 were returned to Lebanon and 5 were intercepted by the Lebanese authorities.”[25] In this same time period in 2024, UNHCR said it “identified 249 deportation incidents from Lebanon involving at least 1,762 Syrian nationals.”[26]
Why Syrian Refugees Are Leaving Lebanon
A complete study of the reasons Syrian refugees leave irregularly by sea is beyond the scope of this report, but interviewees commonly referred to various threats and vulnerabilities in Lebanon that they said led them to a breaking point, as explained below.
The coercive measures imposed by the Lebanese government are a significant reason leading interviewees to decide to leave. Many felt their lack of legal residency status precluded the possibility of leading a normal life in Lebanon. Marwan, a 43-year-old man, entered Lebanon in 2013 with his wife and four children to flee attacks in Aleppo, his hometown.[27] Marwan said he was initially granted a one-year residency and had been able to obtain a renewal until 2017 when GSO suddenly issued a deportation order against him and his wife.[28]Despite the order, Marwan stayed in Lebanon, but said that in or around 2021 the Lebanese authorities arrested his son at a checkpoint in south
Lebanon and then deported him to Syria – which added to his decision to leave.[29]
Suhail, a 27-year-old man from al-Qusayr, came to Lebanon in 2011 after Syrian forces detained his father. When he tried to renew his residency in 2017, Suhail said GSO officers detained and beat him, and refused his residency renewal. He said it was then that he decided to leave Lebanon. “It’s like we’re living [a] barbarian life,” Suhail said. “We are not looking for help. We just want to live in a normal country with rights and regulation so we can grow and survive.”[30]
Aside from coercive official measures, Syrians also face entrenched anti-Syrian sentiments in Lebanon as a result of the nation’s economic difficulties and Lebanese authorities’ scapegoating of the refugee populations, among other reasons.[31] Nassif, a 24-year-old man from Tartus, described a marked shift in societal hostility against Syrians since the economic crisis began:
I wanted to leave Lebanon because of the racism here. After the financial crisis, every problem here they are putting on the Syrians. There is a huge disrespect from the Lebanese towards us. Before the crisis I was able to live and pay my rent. Now after the crisis I have stayed eight months without money […] I do have more than 12 years of experience fixing cars, but the owner of the shop would give me only a quarter of the salary compared to a Lebanese.[32]
Nawal, the 44-year-old woman who escaped to Lebanon in 2013 with her husband and seven children, stayed in a cargo container in Chouaifet, southeast of Beirut, for three years before the family moved to Baissour, a village located in the Mount Lebanon governorate. However, Nawal said one of her sons in 2023 “got into trouble with our Lebanese neighbor.”[33] She said that this neighbor slapped her son and then gathered a group of other individuals to intimidate her family, including at one point threatening to shoot her son. After this incident, Nawal’s husband decided the family should leave Lebanon.[34]
Interviewees commonly spoke of their desire to raise their children in what some of them described as a more humane environment with better education opportunities. Suhail now lives in Akkar district in north Lebanon and is married with two children.[35] He said the lack of legal residency status prevented his children from accessing proper education: “My oldest child is eight years old and he does not even know five plus five.”[36]
Hassan, a 44-year-old father of four from Homs, told Human Rights Watch that he escaped to Lebanon after being tortured by Syrian intelligence units in 2012.[37] He first settled in Wadi Khaled with his family, but moved twice within Lebanon, citing harassment by gangs against his wife and daughter.[38] “For their education, I would go in the water again for the kids,”[39] said Hassan, who survived the now infamous December 31, 2022 shipwreck the first time he attempted to leave Lebanon.
The latest figures from UN humanitarian agencies show that as of 2024, 43 percent of Syrian refugee children of primary school age (between 6 and 11) and 82 percent of those of secondary school age (between 12 and 17) respectively were out of school.[40] Fifty-one percent of Syrian refugee youths between 15 and 24, and alarmingly 70 percent of girls in this age group, did not have access to any education, employment or training.[41]
As result of the conditions discussed above, which are exacerbated by the crushing economic crisis in Lebanon, only 39 percent of Syrian refugees – and only 15 percent of female Syrian refugees – are working as of 2024, almost none in decent employment opportunities that pay enough to cover basic needs.[42] “Everything here is so expensive, the rent went so high and I was paid in Lebanese pounds even though everything is paid in US dollars,” said Zahra, a 44-year-old woman from Idlib, who told Human Rights Watch she fled Syria in 2014 after being tortured in a detention center by Syrian government forces in Hama.[43] She had work sponsorship in Lebanon as a domestic worker, but decided to leave in 2022, feeling she could never sustain a decent life in Lebanon.[44] As noted in the previous section, 75 percent of Syrian refugee households live in extreme poverty in Lebanon.
Why Syrian Refugees Are Leaving Irregularly By Boat
Irregular boat crossings from Lebanon, facilitated by smugglers, are dangerous and costly.[45] Interviewees reported having to pay smugglers between US$1,600 to $6,000 per passenger, which many said they could only raise by borrowing from others. As detailed in later section of this report, interviewees described to Human Rights Watch how boats used for crossings were often unseaworthy, overloaded with passengers, and did not carry sufficient life jackets, food, water, or fuel.
Many interviewees acknowledged the danger associated with boat crossings but undertook the journeys because they had no other way of escaping dire conditions in Lebanon, including their precarious legal status. Crucially, Syrian refugees in Lebanon often lack the ability to leave through regular border crossings and safe, legal migration and resettlement pathways, including because departing from Lebanon through regular, formal border crossings requires a regularized, legal status which many of them cannot obtain because of GSO-imposed restrictions.
Furthermore, many interviewees Human Rights Watch spoke to did not possess valid travel documents. They said their Syrian passports had expired since they left Syria more than a decade ago. Interviewees gave various reasons for nonrenewal with the Syrian embassy in Lebanon, including the high cost, lengthy wait times, and embassy closures.[46] One interviewee said that GSO officers confiscated his passport when he tried to renew his residency. Human Rights Watch has previously documented that GSO summarily expelled Syrian refugees when they tried to depart through Lebanon’s Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport.[47] The risk of mistreatment, including summary expulsion, of Syrian refugees when they encounter GSO or LAF at other official checkpoints has also been well-documented,[48] further deterring individuals from approaching the Syrian embassy in Beirut or departing through official border points.
UNHCR has long maintained that resettlement and other complementary admission pathways to third countries remain the most viable durable solution for Syrian refugees currently hosted in neighboring countries, including Lebanon.[49]Yet the availability of these pathways – which hinges on the willingness of third countries to provide them – has been severely lacking. In 2021, only 7 percent of UNHCR’s projected refugee resettlement needs in Lebanon were met, with 6,246 refugees departing from Lebanon under resettlement programs.[50]
Multiple interviewees told Human Rights Watch that they would not have attempted irregular boat migration if they could leave Lebanon legally. Three interviewees who were eligible for resettlement only decided to attempt irregular boat crossings when they were told, after years of waiting, that their resettlement cases had been rejected. One interviewee whose first attempt resulted in the LAF summarily expelling her to Syria, where she paid smugglers who extorted her for passage back to Lebanon, threatening to hand her over to the Syrian army unless she did so – said she would have attempted a second crossing but decided against it after receiving news that a third country was considering accepting her resettlement case.
Abusive migration control measures, including pull and pushbacks, do not stop people from repeatedly trying to leave, so long as resettlement and complementary pathways remain wholly inadequate amid coercive measures and debilitating economic conditions in Lebanon. Most interviewees have tried to leave Lebanon by boat between three to five times, and many tried again even after being stopped and expelled by Lebanese authorities or pushed back by authorities from the Republic of Cyprus (Cyprus), as detailed in the following sections.
When Human Rights Watch interviewed him in January 2024, Yusuf, a 25-year-old Syrian, had already gone through seven failed departure attempts. One of Yusuf’s attempts resulted in a pushback from Cyprus; while another ended with Lebanese authorities summarily expelling him to Syria, after which he was forced to pay smugglers US$400 to bring him back to Lebanon.[51] Even so, Yusuf said he was still searching for the next boat that would take him away. He expressed how it felt being trapped in a hostile Lebanon:
The authorities here either don’t let us work or they let us work and take all our money and rights and what we deserve. … I want to travel but I don’t have a way now. I haven’t seen my family since coming to Lebanon. … When I came I was 14…it was really dangerous in Syria. The school I was in was destroyed. If I go back, I am wanted by the army. … But now I am stuck here. I tried all the organizations and all the ways. … I can’t go home, stay here, or leave.[52]
On August 17, 2024 Yusuf attempted another boat crossing and was once again detained by the LAF, and forcibly returned to Syria.[53] This time, Yusuf said armed men in Syria demanded $1,500 for return passage to Lebanon. Details of Yusuf’s attempts to leave Lebanon for Cyprus are set out in the sections below.
III. Arrest and Expulsion of Syrians Attempting Boat Departures
Nine interviewees told Human Rights Watch that the LAF or Internal Security Forces (ISF) prevented them from leaving by detaining them as they were boarding departing boats or on the way to coastal departure points. Interviewees told Human Rights Watch that they recognized the LAF and ISF uniforms.
After intercepting the interviewees, the LAF or ISF variously detained them at nearby stations where multiple interviewees reported ill-treatment. None of the interviewees recalled officers explaining clearly the formal legal basis or reason for their detention. None of the interviewees were allowed to contact family members or lawyers. Two interviewees said officers confiscated and never returned their phones and identification documents.
Pullbacks on Beaches
In March 2022, Suhail was on a beach in Akkar, north Lebanon, with about 10 other passengers attempting to board a boat to leave Lebanon. Before he could get on the boat, LAF officers surrounded his group and arrested them without explaining why. LAF officers detained Suhail at a station in Tripoli for two to three hours, and then moved him to another station and kept him there overnight. “I was handcuffed all the time when moving from one place to another,” Suhail said.[54] “I saw that they didn’t have small handcuffs for the kids, but everyone [else] was in handcuffs...” he said.[55]
In June 2023, Nawal and her son, Samir, along with 47 others were on a beach in Tripoli, attempting to board a boat bound for Cyprus where Nawal’s oldest son resided. Nawal and Samir described that they were swimming toward the boat, which was anchored further out from the beach, when the LAF appeared:
The army came when [our group] was still on the boat and in the water. First, we saw two plain-clothed individuals, they started screaming “put your hands up, don’t move.” The army was just behind them – they were wearing Lebanese army uniforms. … Once the smugglers saw the army, they fled from the boat.[56]
Nawal and Samir said they returned to the beach “completely wet and shaking,” where the LAF arrested the group and then detained the group at a station in Aabdeh, north of Tripoli:
We arrived around 4-5 a.m. They took away our phones … they said if they found phones on us, they would beat us, so we all gave them our phones. We slept on the floor in the station inside. All of us – men, women, and children – from the group that tried to leave slept together. The officers only allowed us to eat some canned food that we had on the boat. They didn’t give us water. They didn’t give us anything, didn’t explain why they took us and didn’t give us any opportunity to call our families…
We stayed at the station until 1 p.m. The officers then told us, “Okay, now you can leave.” But they wouldn’t let us take our phones. They took photos of our ID cards and gave us those copies but kept the IDs.[57]
Arrests on Route to Departure Points
Six other interviewees said the LAF or GSO officers intercepted them while on buses or trucks operated by smugglers, on their way to intended departure points. They said they were intercepted between June and July 2023 in locations including Bebnine, Deir Ammar, and Miniyeh, in north Lebanon.
Yusuf said he and around 50 other people were riding on a smuggler-arranged truck in June or July 2023 bound for a beach in Akkar district.[58] He could not see out of the truck. At some point it stopped and he said he “heard the sounds of screaming.”[59] Yusuf said the truck resumed driving but instead of the beach, it dropped the group off at a “big station” somewhere between Bebnine and Deir Ammar where he saw uniformed LAF and GSO officers.[60] Yusuf said he was detained at this station for several hours.[61]
Nassif said the smuggler-operated truck he was on in July 2023 was stopped by “two sedans with black license plates.”[62] He recalled individuals in civilian clothing stepping out and telling his group: “Don’t move, don’t make any noise … we have orders to shoot you if you even move a bit.”[63] Nassif said he was then detained at an ISF station for two days where officers questioned him on his attempted boat crossing, including details regarding the smugglers he used. Nassif also saw around 130 other detainees at this station, including around 30 children and 30 women. He witnessed ISF officers slapping one of the men who was also on his truck:
[The man] tried to hide his ID while being on the truck and the officers saw it. One officer slapped him on the face. They dragged him to the truck, holding his hands on his back, to ask where he hid the ID.[64]
Aisha, a 23-year-old woman, and her husband, Rahim, a 37-year-old man, both from Idlib, had arranged to go on the same boat journey together on July 9, 2023. They said smugglers separated male and female passengers onto separate buses to be transported to the boat departure location in Bebnine, Akkar district. Aisha said there were around 100 people on her bus, which she said the ISF stopped at a checkpoint in Miniyeh.[65] Rahim said around 100 to 150 people were on his bus that the LAF stopped at a checkpoint in Deir Ammar.[66] The couple were each detained separately in nearby locations – Aisha at an ISF station for brief period and Rahim overnight in a basement guarded by the LAF, but he was uncertain whether it was a formal military premises.[67]
In an August 20, 2024 letter to Human Rights Watch, the ISF reported that its patrols intercepted a van on July 8, 2023 with “several Syrians” inside, and two trucks on July 9, 2023 with “117 Syrian nationals (including women and children)” inside.[68] In both cases, the ISF arrested the Lebanese nationals operating the vehicles for “illegally smuggling people,” and transferred the Syrians to the Aabdeh police station – located near Miniyeh and Bebnine.[69] According to the ISF, Syrians detained in the July 8 incident were released; while those in the July 9 incident “were left subject to investigation by the [GSO].”[70]
Kareem, a 39-year-old man from Idlib, said he had wanted to leave Lebanon after living there since 2013 because he could no longer endure the anti-Syrian sentiments and crushing economic conditions.[71] On July 10, 2023, he boarded a smuggler-operated bus in Bebnine, carrying around 130 passengers to an intended boat departure location.[72] Kareem said LAF officers intercepted the bus at a Deir Ammar military checkpoint and detained him at an LAF base for around six hours.[73] There, he witnessed an LAF officer hitting a man:
The officers said “you keep doing this [i.e. trying to leave] time and time again”… One of the officers beat someone who made a remark that “if you’re so tired of us, just let us go.” This officer used his hands to hit him on the face and hit him many times. He was screaming at him telling him to sit.[74]
Zaid, a 23-year-old man from Idlib who had come to Lebanon with his family in 2011, referred to the lack of legal status for Syrians and economic conditions in Lebanon as reasons for him to leave. He wanted to go to Europe, where some of his family members already resided. On July 31, 2023, his smuggler-operated bus was stopped at a checkpoint in Akkar district by uniformed officers who, he said, “handed us to ISF officers in uniform,”[75] who then took them to Aabdeh ISF station:
It was [between 12 a.m. and 1:30 a.m.] when we got to the station. We stayed in a crowded place for one hour. It was so hot. We stayed for 24 hours for investigation. My [phone] was taken. … The police center was so small and there was nowhere to sit. We were all kept in somewhere like a parking lot with fences. … I could only stand. It was difficult for the 24 hours. … They didn’t give me any food or water.[76]
ISF officers released Zaid after 24 hours and told him to pay a fine for trying to leave Lebanon illegally. They said the GSO would contact him for details on paying the fine, but six months later, at the time of the interview, GSO had yet to reach out to him. Zaid also said the ISF never returned his confiscated phone.[77]
Out of the nine interviewees Lebanese authorities prevented from leaving, five were eventually released after detention. The remaining four, Suhail, Yusuf, Kareem, and Rahim were variously detained between two to six hours, and then expelled by the authorities to Syria, all via the Wadi Khaled informal border crossing. Details of their expulsion are discussed below in Section V.[78]
Yusuf contacted Human Rights Watch again in August 2024, saying he had recently attempted another boat crossing that ended in his detention and expulsion to Syria by the LAF. Yusuf said he was detained by the LAF at a staging location near Bebnine, Akkar Governorate on August 17, 2024, as he was awaiting smugglers to transfer him onto a departing boat. Yusuf said the LAF then expelled him to Syria via the Wadi Khaled crossing, where two armed men demanded $1,500 to return him to Lebanon. Yusuf said a relative paid the sum so he could return to Lebanon.[79]
According to an LAF announcement made on August 18, 2024, the LAF had conducted two raids leading to the arrest of “204 Syrians while attempting to travel across the sea illegally.”[80] One of the raids was “conducted on the house of [a Lebanese citizen] in Bebnine, leading to the arrest of 54 Syrians.”[81]
In its letter to Human Rights Watch, the ISF maintained that all arrested individuals were informed of their rights to contact their families or a lawyer of their choice, and that “when any arrest occurs, strict orders are given not to physically or verbally assault any person.”[82] It also noted that it had not received “any allegations of ill-treatment or human rights violations during the arrest and investigation operations that were carried out.”[83]
In an August 9, 2024 letter to Human Rights Watch, GSO said that, between January 1, 2022 and August 1, 2024, GSO recorded 1,388 passengers, including 821 Syrians, on 15 departing boats, who had been arrested or returned when attempting to leave Lebanon.[84] In relation to the incidents documented in this section, GSO said it “was not informed about [these operations] and there was no coordination with [GSO] in this regard.”[85] GSO also referred to:
Articles 16 and 33 of the law concerning entry into, residency in, and exit from Lebanon, issued on 10/7/1962, as “the legal basis for preventing departure from Lebanon except via GDGS posts, and the penalty specified for violating the provisions of Article 16 of this Law.” All land and sea border posts, the General Security Department of Rafic Hariri International Airport, and the General Security Department of the Port of Beirut are considered legal crossings through which all nationalities are allowed to enter or depart.[86]
At the time of publication, the LAF had not responded to Human Rights Watch’s letters inviting its response to the findings set out in this section.
IV. LAF Expelling Syrians Following Rescue at Sea
On December 31, 2022, a boat carrying more than 230 people began to sink in the Mediterranean a few hours after its departure from the coast of Tripoli in northern Lebanon.[87] Human Rights Watch spoke with eight people who were on the boat, some of whom would go on to attempt boat crossings again as detailed in the previous section. Interviewees said the LAF and UNIFIL, the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon, came to their rescue, but that the LAF then expelled Syrian survivors via the informal border crossing in Wadi Khaled.[88]Accounts of those who spoke to Human Rights Watch suggest that the incident was particularly horrifying and traumatizing even for those who had made multiple sea crossing attempts. The shock of having just narrowly escaped death at sea was immediately compounded by the risk or fear of death, torture, and other harm that can come with being expelled to Syria.
A Sinking Boat
Interviewees said the group set out at around 5 a.m. that day from a beach in Selaata in North Governate south of Tripoli, intending to reach Italy. Photographs and videos directly sent to researchers by two interviewees and verified by Human Rights Watch show individuals onboard a small double-deck yacht. “As soon as I reached the boat there was not even a place to put my foot in. At that point we realized [the number of passengers] was a lot more than the boat could handle and we might die,”[89] said Marwan, a 43-year-old man from Aleppo.
Several hours into the journey, interviewees reported seeing smoke and hearing an explosion from the boat’s engine, after which the boat started to sink. Kareem was on the upper deck when the boat went into distress.[90] He reported seeing and hearing the boat captain calling for rescue with a device, at which point the boat started swaying side to side and passengers started dumping food and fuel overboard.[91]
Kareem’s sister-in-law, Aisha, at that point sitting in the lower deck cabin with three of her children, described scenes of panic and horror:
The boat started tilting back and hit the water. I looked at the window and it was submerged in water. We had one window open for air so at this time the water started coming in. … I went outside the room and started seeing people running and … yelling, “We are sinking.”
People were fighting for their lives … they were just pushing others. … I was screaming at [my children] to put on the life jackets. I held my small child and another person’s toddler in my arms and then tried to push our way up. At some point … I realized I lost my child. He was at the bottom of the stairs and people were stepping over him. I screamed at the people to not step on him and I got him back in my arms.
I then made it to the top deck with my child and the toddler, to this small area, trying to hold on to the radar. … we were just screaming for anyone to help us. … When the boat rolled, the people would even jump on us to the other side to balance…[92]
Kareem shared a video with Human Rights Watch filmed before the boat started to sink that showed a cabin with five children including a toddler and a baby.
During the emergency, Kareem called his brother, Rahim, who was also Aisha’s husband. Rahim, who had remained behind in Chekka, Lebanon, received Kareem’s phone call:
Kareem said, “You have to call someone, we are sinking and we are going to drown and we are dying.”… I called … the number for the Lebanese coast guard… Then I received different phone calls [from the authorities] asking me what was happening, where was the boat, what did it look like. … One of the officers who called back said they couldn’t find them and wanted to know where the boat was exactly. He said, “Are you lying to me? Are you one of the smugglers?” He threatened to put me in jail. I said I would do whatever you want, I just want to save my family. I mentioned half of the people on the boat were Lebanese because I was afraid they wouldn’t do anything if I said they were all Syrians.[93]
Interviewees said LAF and UNIFIL vessels arrived around three to four hours after the boat had started to submerge into the water. Both units deployed smaller, inflatable speed boats to retrieve individuals from the sinking boat, transporting them to the main vessels nearby. Interviewees told Human Rights Watch that they pleaded with both LAF and UNIFIL officers not to send them back to Lebanon.
A UNIFIL vessel rescued Nassif, who shared his experience:
I ended up on the UNIFIL boat. Some of us were able to speak some English and able to communicate [with the UNIFIL officers]. I asked the officers where we were going. They replied, “[to whichever] European country would take you.” We told them that we could not go back to Lebanon, that people were scared to go back. We explained that if you take us back to Lebanon, [the Lebanese authorities] would send us back to Syria. It’s not that we committed any crime but it’s not a normal country. I personally told the UNIFIL officers all this. … I thought we were still at sea and not moving during this time when the officers were figuring out if any European country would take us. … Then I realized we were being sent back to Lebanon. That was when people were screaming and crying. Even after we reached the port we insisted to not go down, so we stayed one hour on the boat – we tried to negotiate, and they told us not to worry and that they would hand us to UNHCR and would not give us to the army.[94]
A LAF vessel rescued Marwan, who said he witnessed similar pleas:
The people rescuing us didn’t explain what they were doing or reply to our questions. I was put on a Lebanese boat. We [screamed], “Don’t take us to Lebanon … we cannot go back to Lebanon or Syria.” Some people were saying they would prefer to die here at sea than going back… We started asking the Lebanese coast guard where they were taking us and we said, “If you take us to Syria, we will jump.” They said, “We won’t take you to Syria.” We requested to be taken to the UNIFIL boat but they didn’t listen.[95]
Detention After Rescue
After being rescued, all eight of the people Human Rights Watch interviewed returned to Tripoli port on the morning of January 1, 2023. They recalled Lebanese Red Cross personnel providing them with first aid, sandwiches, and water.
“The treatment was good when the Red Cross was there,” said Zaid, a 23-year-old man from Idlib, “but once they left, the LAF started screaming at us and everything changed.”[96] Lebanese authorities held them at the Tripoli port for the remainder of the day, where various security branches including the LAF, GSO, ISF and the military intelligence unit questioned them.
Kareem said the authorities questioned him about his legal status, UNHCR registration, and how the boat journey was organized, including the names of the smugglers and costs for the trip:
Different Lebanese authorities were there – army, intelligence, GSO. They took us between different authorities who questioned us. … Most of the people didn’t even have shoes and were wet and didn’t have warm clothes. My family [members] and I didn’t have shoes on. The officers were not rough to us, but they did not treat us in a human way. We had just gone through a lot and someone had died. They left us there with no shoes and no cover. We even heard some soldiers say they should have been celebrating New Year’s with their families but that our actions made them stay there.[97]
In addition to Kareem, four other interviewees also said that they remained in bare feet and wet clothing for the entire duration of their detention and questioning at the port.
“What really bothered me was that most of us were barefoot and our clothes were wet, and [that the officers] saw that but didn’t let anyone bring us clothes or anything. They just deported us the next day,” said Aisha.[98]
Five interviewees reported that the authorities confiscated their phones, passports, and other identification documents. Only two of them said the authorities later returned their belongings to them.
Interviewees said Lebanese authorities denied their requests to contact family members. “My sister and wife came to the port and also asked the officers if they could see me, but they refused,” said Hassan, a 44-year-old man from Homs.[99]
Another interviewee, Marwan, had used his phone to call his family:
As soon as I shut my phone, the soldier looked annoyed and approached me and confiscated my phone. The other officer said, “Give me your ID,” and I gave it to him. They asked if I had a passport and I lied and said no, and they searched me. They found my passport and took it. Then they pushed me and hit my shoulder… I asked for my papers back but they [never returned them].[100]
Expulsion to Syria via Wadi Khaled Crossing
After a day of detention and questioning at the Tripoli port, interviewees said the Lebanese authorities loaded the Syrian survivors onto trucks, took them to the border with Syria, and expelled them at the Wadi Khaled crossing.
Jamil, a 48-year-old man from Aleppo, was the only interviewee rescued from the boat who was not expelled. He saw that out of the approximately 230 people rescued, only around 30 of them remained at the Tripoli port without being boarded onto LAF trucks.[101] Human Rights Watch interviewed seven of the Syrian refugees who were expelled, including two women.
Interviewees who were expelled said the LAF dropped them off near a river crossing and forced them to walk across until they reached an agricultural greenhouse on the Syrian side of the border. Many crossed the border barefoot. All had spent more than 24 hours at sea surviving a shipwreck and slept overnight on the floor of the port. On the Syrian side, interviewees said military officers who they understood to be from the Syrian army’s Fourth Division or other armed men promptly took them into custody. Interviewees said they witnessed LAF officers coordinating with the armed men on the Syrian side. Accounts of their expulsion are discussed in the next section.
V. LAF Expelling Syrians at Wadi Khaled
The LAF expelled 10 of the people Human Rights Watch interviewed. Four were expelled after the LAF prevented them from boarding departing boats, and seven were expelled following the December 31, 2022 rescue. This includes Kareem, who was expelled twice, once after his rescue on December 31, 2022 and again on July 10, 2023, when he was arrested on his way to the departure point. All were expelled via the Wadi Khaled informal crossing with Syria. All 10 expelled interviewees eventually returned to Lebanon, 9 of them reported being extorted payment by armed men at the Wadi Khaled area for smuggling services to return to Lebanon, while the remaining interviewee managed to escape back across the border on his own.
All 10 of the expelled interviewees were UNHCR-registered refugees. Two of them said they also had valid legal residency in Lebanon at the time, but were nonetheless expelled.
Apparent Coordination Between LAF and the Syrian Army at Wadi Khaled
Some interviewees who were expelled at the Wadi Khaled crossing said the LAF handed them over to the Syrian army or to people they thought were probably smugglers. In some cases detailed below, interviewees said they witnessed Lebanese and Syrian army officers communicating with each other.
After recounting his first expulsion experience, Kareem said his second was similar:
There was a wall at the crossing and also a small river. The [Lebanese] army pushed us to go to the border and we walked about 200 meters. We were then taken by people almost like mafia who were waiting over there. They were in civilian clothes, but they were carrying weapons. One of them had a Fourth Division uniform. They put us in a plastic hut used to grow vegetables.[102]
Zahra was also rescued from the sinking boat on December 31, 2022, and then expelled at Wadi Khaled:
The army handed us to the smugglers. I saw the smugglers gave a white envelope to the army which seems to be in exchange for keeping us. The smugglers then left us in a big white house used to store vegetables and fruits. … I could also see some of the smugglers were in Lebanese army uniform or people in uniform were working as a group with the smugglers.[103]
“Once the trucks came…some [of the refugees] shouted, ‘If you take us to Syria, just take us back to the sea’,”[104] said Marwan, another expelled interviewee from the December 31 boat. He also said he witnessed coordination between the LAF and the Syrian Fourth Division:
My foot was injured because I didn’t have my shoes. As soon as we reached the border … [LAF officers] started pushing us off the trucks. The Lebanese army pointed weapons at us too. The officers said to the Fourth Division, “Take these people they have money and they had enough money to try to leave.” … The Lebanese army stayed with us until the last person was passed to the Fourth Division.[105]
Yusuf was expelled in or around June or July 2023, following the interception of the smuggler-operated truck he was riding on and his detention at a station manned by LAF and GSO officers, as described above in Section III.[106] He said a “military car” took him to the Wadi Khaled informal crossing, where Lebanese officers “handed us over to the…Syrian army.”[107]
“The Lebanese army handed us directly to the Syrian army – from hand to hand,” said Rahim, who the LAF expelled on or around July 9, 2023 after similarly intercepting the bus he was on.[108] “On the Syrian side, there were army officers wearing uniforms and others wearing civilian clothes. I know the uniform, but they had different color arm bands so I cannot be sure if it was the Fourth Division,” he said.[109]
Extortion and Threats of Violence at Wadi Khaled
Interviewees detailing their expulsion at Wadi Khaled consistently described being detained at an agricultural greenhouse (“plastic house,” “plastic hut”) on the Syrian side of the border. Interviewees said this greenhouse was operated by armed men in civilian clothes who they thought were smugglers who coordinated with the Syrian army to extort people who were expelled. Smugglers threatened to hand them over to the Syrian army if they did not pay them to smuggle them back to Lebanon. These threats were often made in the presence of uniformed Syrian Fourth Division soldiers. Interviewees also reported that Syrian soldiers themselves demanded payments.
In general, interview accounts suggest that lawlessness pervades the Wadi Khaled informal crossing area: “The people were more afraid at Wadi Khaled than being in the water,” said Zahra who was rescued from the December 31 boat and then expelled.[110] Kareem described the individuals who controlled the place as “mafia.”[111] Zaid said the area “was like a business,” where in addition to people smuggling he witnessed other illicit activities, such as unregulated currency exchanges.[112]
Zahra described her exchange with smugglers at the greenhouse:
Smugglers holding weapons guarded the house. They took all our names and noted them in notebooks. They then asked us to provide names of people who could pay for our release. They would cross out our names when we contacted a family member who would agree to pay. So, I gave them my sister’s name and she came [to the border area on the Lebanon side] with the money. … For people who didn’t have money, the smugglers said they would hand them to the Syrian Fourth Division.[113]
“My wife called the smugglers and they asked for $600 to have me come back,” said Marwan, who did not have enough money to pay them directly.[114] “My wife said she didn’t have the entire amount immediately. The smuggler told her to pay him now or he would send me right then to the Syrian authorities,” he said.[115]
Yusuf identified the men who took his money as Syrian army officers:
[Lebanese authorities] handed us over to the [Syrian army] … which caught us and treated us harshly. They told us whoever wants to return to Lebanon must pay the money, and whoever does not will be arrested. … These were soldiers, but they only cared if we had money. People who had money stayed put. Others who didn’t have money were taken away. They took US$400 from me. The people who took the money were also in Syrian army uniforms. Some others were plain clothed.[116]
Most interviewees paid between US$400 and $600 to armed smugglers. Hassan could not afford the price and escaped from the greenhouse:
I am not really sure who the people were who asked me for money, but I couldn’t pay. I saw some people there in Syrian army uniforms and some smugglers. They were trying to take our names, there were 60 people in line. I gave them a fake name. They then told me to just wait… After staying there for about 10 minutes, I escaped. I ran and ran. I jumped in the lake and went to the Lebanese side. I hid on the ground when I saw a Lebanese Army guy. I then made it to a taxi. My sister’s husband is Lebanese and they live near Wadi Khaled, so I asked the driver to take me there and they then paid him.[117]
In its letter to Human Rights Watch, GSO said it “was not informed about” the summary expulsions detailed in this section, and there was “no coordination with the [GSO] in this regard.[118] GSO noted that “each expulsion or deportation of Syrian, Lebanese, or any other immigrants…of which [GSO] had knowledge and on which it coordinated, was subject to international human rights law standards under UNHCR supervision, as recorded and documented in [GSO’s] records.”[119]GSO also referred to:
Resolution No. 50/AE/MJAD/S issued by the Higher Defense Council on 24/4/2019, [ordering] the security forces to deport any Syrian who entered the country illegally after 24/4/2019 (the Higher Defense Council’s resolution is considered pivotal in protecting sovereignty from illegal human flows into Lebanon, or [preventing Lebanon from becoming] a corridor for illegal immigration to Europe, where the pace of illegal immigration via sea has increased between 2022 and 2023).[120]
Human Rights Watch notes that all 10 interviewees who were summarily expelled to Syria by the LAF had entered Lebanon prior to 2019, and were UNHCR-registered refugees. Two of the interviewees also said they held valid Lebanon residency at the time of their expulsion.
VI. Republic of Cyprus: Collective Expulsions of Syrian Boat Arrivals
Cyprus has in recent years become the most common destination for irregular boats departing from Lebanon. Cyprus has responded with collective expulsions and pushbacks of boat arrivals. In September 2020, Human Rights Watch documented Cyprus’s summary push back or expulsion of more than 200 migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers coming from Lebanon.[121]
Human Rights Watch research confirms that Cyprus has continued to commit these violations, which now also include chain refoulement. Human Rights Watch interviewed five UNHCR-registered Syrian refugees who left Lebanon on boats bound for Cyprus, including one woman and one 15-year-old boy.
The five interviewees arrived in Cypriot territory onboard four different boats in August 2021 and between July and September 2023. Interviewees said the Cypriot authorities detained the people who arrived on these boats, and they either experienced beatings or other ill-treatment themselves, or witnessed others being subjected to them. In one case, Cypriot Coast Guards held the boat at sea for a day before they brought the individuals ashore.
In all cases, Cyprus collectively expelled the individuals, including all five interviewees, without giving them access to asylum procedures, any individualized assessment, or other due process guarantees including informing the individuals of the legal basis for their treatment, allowing access to lawyers or providing avenues to legally challenge their expulsions. Cypriot authorities returned the individuals directly to Lebanon where the LAF summarily expelled four of the interviewees to Syria shortly after receiving them. Two of the interviewees, a woman and her son, along with their five family members, were taken into custody by the Syrian army for nine days following their expulsion by the LAF.
In a June 13, 2024 letter to Human Rights Watch, Cyprus Minister of Interior Konstantinos Ioannou said that:
For the past six years, Cyprus has consistently been the European Union Member State with the highest number of first-time applications for international protection in relation to its population size … The unforeseen and unprecedented increase of arrivals led the Government of Cyprus to [adopt] strategic measures, necessary for the effective management of migration flows … Cyprus authorities put every effort in order to provide assistance to those in need and to facilitate people who express their will to apply for international protection, regardless of country of origin…[122]
Collective Expulsion at Sea
Yusuf, who had seven total attempted boat crossings prior to 2024 and whose account of his expulsion is covered in the previous section, told Human Rights Watch that Cypriot authorities pushed him back on one of his attempts. Around midnight on August 20, 2021, Yusuf left Lebanon on a boat with around 72 passengers bound for Cyprus. He described the boat as a single motor “fishing boat” that “looked too small for 70 people.”[123] The boat carried some canned food and water, but the water ran out during the journey.[124] It also did not carry sufficient life jackets for every passenger.[125]
After over 10 hours at sea, Yusuf said a Cypriot Coast Guard vessel intercepted the boat. A video sent by Yusuf to Human Rights Watch shows a grey Coast Guard fast patrol boat with the words “NAYTIKU AΣTYNOMIA MARINE POLICE” written on the side approaching Yusuf’s boat at high speed, at one point moving directly in front of his boat, creating a wake:
[T]he Cyprus boat appeared and asked us to stop. When we didn’t listen, they started to throw a huge rope to try to catch the engine. Their boat was really fast and big. They made a lot of big waves … Our engine was already really bad and stopped working… After our engine was completely broken, another Cyprus boat came toward us.[126]
At that point, Yusuf said, six passengers jumped overboard.[127] He saw two other larger, grey vessels and a helicopter approach, apparently to search for the people who were in the water. “It was like a horror movie happening. … The wind completely changed and got really strong with high waves. The boat was moving a lot. Everyone was screaming,” he said.[128]
Left image shows the helicopter route on August 20,2021 at around 10:30 a.m. Right image shows a close up on the zig-zag pattern the helicopter took for over 20 minutes before returning to land. Courtesy of ADSBexchange.com
Human Rights Watch tracked an AW139 helicopter, one of three used by the Cypriot Air Force Command for search and rescue, approximately 35 kilometers east of the southern coast of Cyprus at around 10:30 a.m. on August 20, 2021.[129] The helicopter flew at low altitude in a zig-zag pattern typically used for search and rescue for approximately 20 minutes before returning to Cyprus.[130]
Yusuf described that one of the larger grey vessels eventually approached and started towing the boat toward shore. However, before reaching shore, he said the Cypriot vessel detached the towline, with passengers still onboard, and did not offer any food or water:
[T]he bigger boat tried to attach a rope to us but was unsuccessful. Then another boat tried and we were able to attach the rope ourselves. I could see they were [sailing] toward land. We felt very happy … thinking they were taking us to Cyprus. … But at a certain point the boat stopped – they cut the rope and just left. Our boat was very close to shore – I could see passing cars and land and buildings. I could also see the Cyprus boats that took us there nearby. I think they were just monitoring. None of the officers tried to board our boat. They left us overnight. … We got really scared. That night they didn’t give us anything or communicate [with us].[131]
The next morning, Yusuf said a smaller vessel manned by Cypriot officers came and collected a pregnant woman and left 12 small bottles of water for the 70 passengers. Soon after, the boat began to sink. According to Yusuf, the passengers pleaded with Cypriot officers to rescue them and asked them for asylum:
Our boat then started taking in water. So, we started throwing our stuff out. … We started screaming from far away that we were sinking…some of us decided to just jump in the water. A bigger boat came near us, and they had [a] translator onboard. He was with other uniformed officers. We told the translator we were Syrians and said we are seeking asylum. We also said we were sinking and people were in the water. He said we have a bigger boat coming to rescue. … One of the people in the water swallowed the fuel that we threw out previously. He was in bad shape.[132]
Yusuf said a “big boat” then arrived around noon alongside the sinking boat and started loading the passengers.[133] Human Rights Watch analyzed a video that Yusuf originally posted on Facebook recorded in bright sunlight which shows what appears to be a standby rescue vessel with “Ledra Pride” written on the hull of its prow. He saw armed, uniformed officers on this vessel, the people who had previously jumped overboard, and other Syrians apparently from another intercepted boat. He also recalled talking with crew members on the vessel who were Egyptian, who told him that the vessel was chartered by the Cypriot state.[134]
The Ledra Pride sails under a Cypriot flag and is one of six boats owned by Ledra Ena Shipping (CY), a private company registered with the Cypriot Registrar of Companies.[135] According to the Ledra Ena Shipping CY’s website, the boat is a standby rescue/supply vessel that can “accommodate up to 300 rescuees.”[136]Reports from Cypriot news outlets state that the Ledra Pride had also been used to return migrants from Cyprus to Lebanon in operations in 2022 and 2023. According to those media reports, in August 2023, trade unions representing the Cypriot police force raised concerns about these returns, claiming that the number of migrants returned on these vessels were often beyond their maximum licensed passenger carrying capacity of 50 people.[137] The reports state that the official police spokesperson claimed that an “exceptional license” was issued in April 2023 to allow the Ledra Pride to carry up to 300 people.[138]
Boat tracking data acquired by Human Rights Watch shows the Ledra Pridestopping around three kilometers east of the port of Limassol for approximately three hours on August 21, 2021 between 9:40 a.m. and 1 p.m.[139]
Yusuf said the officers held the individuals in cabins inside the vessel as they continued to ask for asylum:
The people who had jumped last night were already on the boat. I also saw people from another boat that apparently came from Syria. After we got on board, I spoke with some of those people and they said the boat came from Syria and they were running away from the regime.
On this boat there were people in different uniforms but some in plain clothes. The officers gave us face masks. … They separated the men from the women. The kids from the men. And then they put us in a room inside the boat. They put men in one room and women and children in another. … Two to three officers were guarding the room. They were all holding guns.
We asked [the officers] where they were taking us, but they wouldn’t answer. We explained whenever we had the chance that we were seeking asylum. Some of the people from the other boat spoke Greek and said they were seeking asylum…, but the officers never responded.[140]
The Ledra Pride’s route from August 21 to 24, 2021. Source: VesselFinder
According to boat tracking data, the Ledra Pride was then piloted to Larnaca on August 22, 2021, before traveling across the Mediterranean Sea to Beirut.[141]
Yusuf said the Ledra Pride arrived in Beirut port at around 9 p.m. and all the interdicted people disembarked.[142] According to boat-tracking data, the Ledra Pride arrived at the Beirut port at around 9:50 p.m. on August 23, 2021, before leaving again for Cyprus two hours later.[143] “We saw the Lebanese army, the Lebanese Red Cross, UNHCR, and also the police,” Yusuf said. “The Lebanese army was … separating us … by whether we came illegally or came directly from Syria.”[144] The Lebanese authorities allowed Yusuf to leave the port but confiscated his identification papers and gave him a paper slip that said the Lebanese authorities were holding his documents, which he has never managed to retrieve.[145]
Detention in Cyprus Following Interception at Sea
Human Rights Watch interviewed three other Syrian refugees whose boats were intercepted by the Cypriot Coast Guard, but unlike in Yusuf’s case, the Coast Guard brought these passengers ashore.
Section III documented the LAF’s pullback of Nawal, a 44-year-old woman, and her 19-year-old son, Samir, as they attempted to board a boat for Cyprus.[146] On July 27, 2023, the two attempted another boat crossing for Cyprus, along with Nawal’s husband and their four other children, setting out on a boat from a beach in Chekka, Batroun district in north Lebanon.[147] According to Nawal, the boat carried around 75 passengers. It had no food, water, or life jackets. After more than 24 hours at sea, at around midnight, Nawal said a drone appeared above the boat. Fifteen minutes later, she saw three military vessels and a helicopter approach. She described one vessel as a “warship” and the other two as “speedboats.”[148]Nawal said officers on one of the speedboats signaled her boat to follow the vessel’s lead, which it did.[149]
After six more hours, Nawal said her boat landed on a beach in Cyprus at 4 or 5 a.m. “There were so many officials as if the whole government was there,” she said, and there was also a “female translator who seemed Egyptian.”[150] Nawal said individuals from the boat stayed on this beach until 9 a.m., many still in wet clothing, as Cypriot officers conducted body searches. Nawal pleaded with one of the officials to offer medical attention to one of her sons who was vomiting but was ignored. She said she did not see any humanitarian agencies there. Afterward, the Cypriot authorities loaded the individuals on a bus and transferred them to what she described as an “immigration center,” where they detained the group in an uncovered, fenced area.[151] Nawal said it was only there that the Cypriot authorities offered the people water, but not food.[152]
At 10 p.m. on August 8, 2023, Bilal, a 25-year-old man from Idlib, set out on a Cyprus-bound boat from Tripoli, north Lebanon. Bilal entered Lebanon in 2011 and had legal residency until GSO refused to renew it in 2020. He said there were around 17 people, all men, on this boat, but only six or seven life jackets. Bilal said the group had spent a total of three days at sea when it was intercepted by two vessels flying the same flags with uniformed officers onboard, though Bilal could not recognize the country to which the flags belonged. The authorities transferred the passengers to their vessels, took them ashore in Cyprus, and then transferred them via bus to a station that was about 20 minutes away from their landing location. Cypriot officers held the people in a semi-covered area which he said “seemed like a parking lot,” and made them sit on the ground.[153] He said the officers also offered them food and water.[154]
Detention, Physical Abuse, and Denial of Asylum Procedures in Cyprus
In Cyprus, all three interviewees either experienced or witnessed the authorities deliver beatings and other abuses. No one was given the opportunity to lodge an asylum claim.
After landing in Cyprus in the early morning of July 28, 2023, Nawal and Samir said all the passengers were taken to a detention center. They said Cypriot officers brought five people, including Nawal’s husband, inside a building for questioning, while the rest of the group sat out in the open.
Despite a female guard’s assurances to Nawal that they would be taken to a “camp,” Nawal said Cypriot officers took them to a port.[155] “As soon as I saw out of the bus that we had been driven to a big boat,” she said, “I knew they would send us back.”[156] Nawal asked an officer where they were taking them. An officer told her, “We will take you to Syria,” she recalled.[157] Nawal described how Cypriot officers violently forced the people onto the vessel:
We didn’t want to come down from the bus… The officers started grabbing us and shoving us off the bus. They hit [my son] on his nose and broke it. They grabbed my scarf and my hair and dragged me down from the bus. So, my husband jumped in and said, “Why are you hitting my wife?” The officers then took him down and started to hit him everywhere. The blood came from his nose and mouth, everywhere. They used a taser and baton on him. The woman officer then came on the bus [to take] my daughters [onto the boat] and even took off their hijabs. They were very violent. Two of the officers were hitting my daughter. The officers then put zip ties on our wrists and ankles. And even on the young kids as well.[158]
Bilal, who landed in Cyprus on August 10 or 11, 2023, also described being detained at a Cypriot station where he witnessed officers beat a man during interrogation:
The officers took the boat operator and two [people] to one side… I could see and hear what happened. They first asked the boat operator where we came from. … The officer slapped his face. I don’t know how many times he hit him, but his face had a mark from the slapping.[159]
Bilal added that people from his boat told the interpreter at the detention station that they wanted to claim asylum:
There was a person, an Iraqi, I think, who spoke our language and came to speak with us. He must have been an interpreter or an investigator for the Cyprus Coast Guard but he wasn’t wearing a uniform. He came to us on his own and spoke with us as a group. We explained to him that we are here to seek asylum and he said, “Don’t worry, we will move you to the camps.” I didn’t see this person again after this exchange.[160]
After detaining Bilal and his group for almost a day, Cypriot officers instead transferred them onto a vessel:
At 3 a.m., they zip-tied our hands and put us on some kind of army jeep. [Then] they put us on … a big boat with lots of room in there. They were all in the same uniform. On this boat there were also people from other boats that had made it to Cyprus from Lebanon.[161]
Detention and Expulsion of an Unaccompanied Child Asylum Seeker
One of the interviewees who landed in Cyprus was a 15-year-old boy, Habib, who traveled alone. Habib is from Idlib and came to Lebanon with his family in 2013 when he was three years old. He lived with his parents and seven other family members in an informal refugee settlement near Kouikhat, Akkar district, less than a 30-minute drive from the Syrian border. Habib told Human Rights Watch that he dropped out of school after seventh grade to work at a nearby vegetable market. He said that he recently became unemployed because his Lebanese boss decided to hire only Lebanese workers. He said he wanted to leave Lebanon primarily for better employment opportunities; as the oldest child, he felt responsible for providing for his family, including his father who has diabetes. He also said he wanted better education opportunities.[162]
Habib said that sometime in September 2023 he boarded a boat which carried around 36 passengers in total. He noted there were other children on the boat, but he was not aware of their ages. The boat set out from a beach in Aabdeh, Akkar Governorate at 6 p.m. After 48 hours at sea, during which the boat was slowed down by an engine malfunction and a leaky hull, the group landed on a shore in Cyprus at 3 a.m.[163]
Habib said the passengers asked civilians they encountered to call the police. They surrendered themselves when uniformed officers arrived. The authorities detained the group at a location 30 minutes away by bus, according to Habib, which he described as a huge place with what looked like a police station and an open courtyard surrounded by walls. “We were sat there in the open. … I could see the sky,” he said.[164] Officers provided food and water to the people. Habib said he and others slept in the “open yard” for two nights as officers carried out rounds of questioning throughout the day.[165]
According to Habib, one of the passengers could speak Greek and he explained to the officers at the station that “we are refugees coming from Syria running away from the war.”[166] However, in what Habib described as multiple rounds of questioning that lasted an entire day, the Cypriot authorities “didn’t ask about refugee claims and whether we wanted to stay in Cyprus.”[167]
Instead, Cypriot officers “mainly wanted to know where we came from and who was operating the boat,” Habib said.[168] He said that officers took the people “one by one into the building for questioning … I was questioned by one officer and one translator.”[169] He said that the investigating officers also took his photograph and provided him with an identifying number. Habib recalled that officers “asked me where my parents were. They also asked for my age. I told them I was 15.”[170]The officers did not refer his case to child protection authorities and did not otherwise appear to adjust their procedures to take his age into account.[171]
Habib said the following night at 3 a.m., “officers woke us up and put zip ties on our hands … even the children.”[172] He described officials transporting them by car to a beach where he saw “police officers waiting for us,” who loaded the people on a boat.[173] They kept Habib and other people inside a cabin, and only took off their zip ties after the vessel started moving.[174]
Collective Expulsion to Beirut Port Followed by Summary Expulsion by LAF
After the Cypriot authorities forced Nawal, her son Samir, Bilal, Habib, and other people who travelled on the same boat journeys onto vessels manned by uniformed Cypriot officers, all four interviewees reported that the vessels returned them directly to Beirut port, where members of the LAF were either waiting for them or arrived shortly after disembarkation. They said the LAF took them into custody at the port, and then summarily expelled the Cyprus-expelled Syrians, including all four interviewees, to Syria. Nawal and Samir said, after being forced across the Syrian border, members of the Syrian army detained them and their five accompanying family members for nine days.
After landing in Cyprus on July 28, 2023 and spending nearly two days in Cypriot custody, Nawal and Samir told Human Rights Watch that the vessel, which they were forced onto by Cypriot officers, returned them to Beirut port. Nawal recalled arriving in Beirut at around 2:30 p.m. that day.[175] News outlets at the time also reported that Cyprus returned over 70 migrants to Lebanon on July 30, 2023.[176]Nawal saw that the Lebanese Red Cross was already at the port as the people disembarked, and the LAF arrived shortly after.[177] Nawal said the LAF held the group at the port until past midnight, during which LAF officers questioned the men and took their fingerprints.[178]
At around 2 a.m., according to Nawal, the LAF loaded people onto buses, including herself, Samir, and their five family members:
The army drove us from the port to the checkpoint at the border where they put us on army trucks. They were really high up and I needed help to get on. At around 4 a.m., the truck drove us from the checkpoint to a no-man’s land in between the [Syrian and Lebanese] borders where the army dumped us, telling us to run to the other side.[179]
Nawal did not know which border crossing it was – but after being forced to walk across to the Syrian side of the border, Nawal said the Syrian army detained her and her family for nine days:
We didn’t know where to go. … We didn’t have our phones, money, food, we didn’t even have our shoes. I and my daughter were barefoot the whole time. … We walked and came across a Syrian army checkpoint … The officers asked me where we came from and I said the Lebanese army pushed us back. … We were interrogated for nine days. It was the 18 Unit of the Syrian army that detained us.[180]
Nawal said they were released in Damascus and that she subsequently crossed irregularly back into Lebanon.
Bilal, who landed in Cyprus on August 10 or 11, 2023 and described being forcibly returned on a vessel manned by Cypriot officers after a one-day detention in Cyprus, said the vessel traveled directly back to the Beirut port and disembarked all the people.[181] He saw the Lebanese Red Cross at the port, and another humanitarian organization which offered people sanitary kits. He said the LAF arrived shortly after:
[T]he Lebanese army came and took us to the military police station at the port. … We were sitting in the open yard at the station. The army brought three tents in and did investigations there. One by one, they asked where we came from, where we resided in Lebanon, how we left, and how we knew about the smugglers and who they were… They also took my Syrian identification papers and never gave them back to me. The whole process went from 10 a.m. to 2-3 p.m.[182]
Afterward, Bilal described the LAF expelling the refugees to Syria via the Masnaa border crossing:
[T]hey put us on a bus and took us to Masnaa border point and transferred us to the army division there. They then sent us to the no-man’s territory with Syria. One woman in the group had a phone so we were able to phone our families. Before the Syrian army reached us, the smugglers got to us first. They asked if we had money to go back to Lebanon. Everyone with us was then smuggled back to Lebanon at the same time. I had to pay US$500.[183]
Habib, the unaccompanied 15-year-old boy, said he was on the Cypriot return vessel for seven hours, arriving at Beirut port at around 11 a.m. He said the LAF was waiting at the Beirut port:
[W]hen the door opened, … the Lebanese army was waiting. I could see around 30 uniformed soldiers there. They started making fun of us and said they would send us to Maher al Assad who is in charge of the Syrian army’s Fourth Division.[184]
Habib said the LAF questioned people “one after the other” at the Beirut port.[185]He said LAF officers asked him “who was the smuggler and how did you do this trip?”[186] He also witnessed an LAF officer beat a man during questioning at the port. “One of the people with us asked an officer what would happen to us and where were we going and the officer beat him and took him away and we never saw him again,” Habib said.[187] “I saw the officer beating him on the back, both punching and slapping.”[188]
The questioning lasted until 4 p.m., after which the LAF summarily expelled the group to Syria, dropping them off at the Masnaa crossing’s “no-man’s land,” according to Habib:
They put us on an army bus and took us to the Masnaa border…and then a pick-up truck to us to the no man’s zone. The army said you can go to Syria, and then they left. They dumped all of us there, including [a] child. They said now go to al-Assad.[189]
Habib told Human Rights watch that a smuggler in the no-man’s zone offered to take the expelled people back to Lebanon for US$100 each. He offered the smuggler his father’s contact number, and his father arranged for payment to be made when Habib was smuggled back to the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon.[190]
Cyprus Minister of Interior, Konstantinos Ioannou, told Human Rights Watch that “in 2020, Cyprus and Lebanon re-endorsed their mutual agreement on managing cases of third country nationals who attempt to cross the sea from Lebanon and enter Cyprus illegally…there were several cases, when boats were intercepted and sent back to Lebanon for further management, in respect of our agreement.”[191]“European Union Institutions and Agencies were informed of this practice,” Minister Ioannou said, but information on the “practical enforcement of this agreement is not available to the Ministry of Interior as it was carried out by the Police.”[192] The Ministry of Justice and Public Order which oversaw the Cypriot Police Force, notified Human Rights Watch by email on July 19, 2024 that it would adopt Minister Ioannou’s response, without providing further information.[193]
In an August 22, 2024 letter to Human Rights Watch, Acting Director-General Beate Gminder of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs (DG HOME), responsible for supporting EU Member States in managing EU borders, said the Commission “is aware that Cyprus has concluded with Lebanon a Readmission Agreement. Returns of irregular migrants, including under bilateral agreements, are to be implemented by Member States in full respect of EU and international law.”[194] She added that EU cooperation with Cyprus “does not presently extend to sea border surveillance and search and rescue activities.”[195] However, “Frontex [i.e. the European Border and Coast Guard Agency] is supporting Cyprus [including] on return operations [and] operational support [in] screening, registration and fingerprinting of migrants upon arrival [and] with information and intelligence gathering....”[196]
According to Acting Director-General Gminder, the European Commission is following reports of the incidents described in this section, “including through regular contacts with UNHCR who has informed extensively on the issue.”[197]“[T]he Commission takes allegations of wrongdoings very seriously,” she said, but “[i]t is the responsibility of Member States to fully and independently investigate any allegations of violations of fundamental rights, and to [prosecute] any established wrongdoing … We expect the national authorities to swiftly investigate any pushbacks and violence allegations, with a view to establishing the facts and properly follow-up any wrongdoing, if identified.”[198]
The European Commission was also “aware of reports of possible violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law by Lebanese security actors,” according to an August 20, 2024 letter to Human Rights Watch from Director Francisco Joaquin Gaztelu Mezquiriz of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Neighborhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR), responsible for the EU’s foreign relations with neighboring countries.[199] He said the Commission regularly “remind[ed] its Lebanese counterparts [of] the importance of respecting … the principle of non-refoulement as well as due process and safeguards in cases that involve refugees.”[200]
Lebanon’s GSO said that Lebanon “tries to promote cooperation with European countries, especially Cyprus, by exchanging information about smugglers or illegal boats,” and that “each expulsion or deportation operation of Syrian, Lebanese, or any other immigrants, by Cypriot or any other authorities…which [GSO] had knowledge [and] coordinated [on], was subject to international human rights law standards under UNHCR supervision…”[201]
GSO did not otherwise comment on the specific incidents detailed in sections IV to VI of this report, but told Human Rights Watch that it most recently coordinated with Cyprus on April 17, 2024 to receive 224 passengers from three boats returned to Lebanon by Cyprus.[202] GSO said the returned individuals included 219 Syrians, including 16 unaccompanied children and “65 people who were returned to Syria in coordination with the Lebanese army in implementation of Higher Defense Council Resolution No. 50/AE/MJAD/S for entering Lebanon illegally after 24/4/2019.”[203]
At time of publication, the LAF had not responded to Human Rights Watch’s letters inviting its response to the findings set out in sections V and VI of this report.[204]
VII. International Legal Standards
Based on evidence described in the previous sections, Lebanon and Cyprus have violated the following obligations and prohibitions under international law.
Nonrefoulement and Prohibition Against Collective Expulsion
Nonrefoulement refers to the legal prohibition on the return of anyone to a place where they would face a real risk of persecution, torture or other serious ill-treatment, or a threat to life.[205] Nonrefoulement is a principle of customary international law, meaning states are bound by it irrespective of any additional treaty obligations.[206] It is also grounded in article 33 of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention),[207] article 3 of the International Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Convention against Torture),[208] articles 6, 7, and 9 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),[209] and article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights).[210]
The prohibition against returning a person to a place they risk facing torture is absolute, meaning states cannot use, for example, national security or public order, as reasons not to comply with it.
Article 4 of Protocol 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which Cyprus is a state party, specifically prohibits the “collective expulsion of aliens.”[211] The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that this prohibition applies to “any measure compelling aliens, as a group to leave a country, except where such a measure is taken on the basis of a reasonable and objective examination of the particular case of each individual alien of the group.”[212] This includes summary expulsions of individuals travelling irregularly by boat who are interdicted at sea and those who have landed.[213]
The Court has further ruled that collectively expelling migrants who are prevented from requesting asylum is a violation of their right to be protected from inhuman or degrading treatment under article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.[214] If the state ought to be aware of facts about a person that indicate they have protection needs, its nonrefoulement obligation is triggered regardless of whether the person explicitly requests asylum.[215]
The prohibition of refoulement applies to expulsions or returns effected “in any manner whatsoever,” meaning it covers both direct and indirect measures.[216]These include indirect, chain, or secondary refoulement, as the UN Committee against Torture, the treaty body that authoritatively interprets the Convention Against Torture, has maintained:
[T]he person at risk should never be deported to another State from which the person may subsequently face deportation to a third State in which there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture.[217]
With regards to refugees at sea, UNHCR’s Executive Committee has specifically cautioned against interception measures that result in chain refoulement.[218]UNHCR emphasizes that states should not disembark a refugee in the jurisdiction of another state which they cannot ensure would protect the refugee from onward refoulement or treat them in accordance with international human rights standards.[219]
Furthermore, international law generally prohibits the deportation or expulsion of an individual in a summary manner. Article 32 of the 1951 Refugee Convention and articles 13 and 14 of the ICCPR require any expulsion to be pursuant to a legal decision made in accordance with due process where the affected individual must have been given avenues to challenge the decision. The European Court of Human Rights has also held that an expulsion would be illegal under article 4 of Protocol 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights if conducted without a reasonable, objective and individualized assessment.[220] Furthermore, individuals whose entry or asylum claims have been denied must be allowed to stay in the territory pending decision on any appeal they may lodge.[221]
In addition to treaty and international customary law obligations, UNHCR has called upon all states to suspend the forced return of Syrians, a call that goes beyond nonrefoulement for refugees who qualify under the 1951 Refugee Convention or people facing individualized risk of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment:
In light of continued conflict, insecurity, and contamination with explosive remnants of war; severe concerns about the rule of law and widespread human rights violations and abuses, including against returnees; fragmented community relations and a lack of genuine reconciliation efforts; massive destruction and damage to homes, critical infrastructure and agricultural lands; and deepening economic and humanitarian crises, which are compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic, UNHCR continues to call on states not to forcibly return Syrian nationals and former habitual residents of Syria, including Palestinians previously residing in Syria, to any part of Syria, regardless of whether the area is under control of the Government or under control of another state or non-state entity. UNHCR further wishes to remind states that restrictions on humanitarian access persist, which limits free and unhindered access to returnees.[222]
Lebanon’s expulsion of Syrian refugees to Syria, as described above in sections IV to VI, violates the principle of nonrefoulement and its corresponding obligations to which Lebanon is bound under customary international law, and as a party to the Convention Against Torture and ICCPR. In total, 14 interviewees who were also UNHCR-registered Syrian refugees reported being expelled by the Lebanese authorities to Syria. As noted above, Syrian refugees face grave risk of killings, torture, arbitrary detention, and kidnapping amongst other serious threats to life and security, if returned to Syria. Two interviewees and their family members were in fact detained by the Syrian army after the LAF expelled them. Further, the Lebanese authorities did not offer any of the expelled interviewees valid legal basis for, or any opportunity to challenge, their expulsion.
Cyprus is a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, Convention Against Torture, ICCPR, and European Convention on Human Rights. Cyprus’s pushbacks of Syrian refugees to Lebanon, described above in section VI, is a violation of the nonrefoulement principle, and amounts to collective expulsion prohibited under the European Convention on Human Rights. All five interviewees who Cyprus expelled to Lebanon are UNHCR-registered Syrian refugees. Interviewees described clear pleas to Cypriot authorities to seek asylum and the Cypriot authorities’ awareness of their Syrian nationality.
Yet, the Cypriot authorities did not inquire if the individuals were recognized refugees, nor offer access to asylum procedures. Cyprus did not provide any legal basis for the interviewees’ expulsion that were individually assessed or challengeable.
Cyprus’s disembarkation of Syrian refugees in Lebanon blatantly disregards the well-documented risks of ill-treatment and onward expulsion which Syrians face at the hands of Lebanese authorities. Four interviewees were expelled by the LAF after Cyprus forcibly returned them to Beirut port. Based on the interviewees’ evidence and publicly available information, Cyprus had no procedure or mechanism to ensure Lebanon would protect the expelled Syrians from chain-refoulement to Syria.
Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment
Article 16(1) of the Convention Against Torture prohibits “acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” when committed, instigated, or acquiesced to by a public official.[223] Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights contains the same prohibition which the European Court of Human Rights has interpreted to extend to acts which arouses in its victims feelings of fear, debases their physical or moral resistance, or otherwise drives them to act against their will.[224] The UN Human Rights Committee, the treaty body that authoritatively interprets the ICCPR, said in General Comment 20, “States parties must not expose individuals to the danger of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment upon return to another country by way of their extradition, expulsion or refoulement.”[225]
International human rights bodies have consistently found that excessive use of force in the context of pushbacks, deportation, or expulsion of migrants and asylum seekers violated the prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. Such impermissible conduct includes physical violence and the deprivation of food and water during pushbacks or following interceptions, as held by the European Court of Human Rights.[226] The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants in his 2021 report on pushbacks of migrants on land and at sea cited “beatings, electric shocks, forced river crossings” as “treatment that appeared to be designed to subject migrants to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”[227]
In 2022, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) identified “clear patterns of physical ill-treatment deployed against foreign nationals in the context of pushback operations across Council of Europe Member States’ borders” and “other forms of inhuman and degrading treatment.” These included “punches, slaps, blows with truncheons,” “forcing [individuals] to walk barefoot,” and the “deprivation of food and water for prolonged periods.”[228]
Human Rights Watch documentation indicates that Lebanon and Cyprus violated the prohibition against cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in their treatment of Syrian refugees under their custody, including during detention and transit. Interviewees described Lebanese officers delivering beatings, slaps, and verbal insults. When detained by the Lebanese authorities, interviewees described the mixing of men, women, and children in crowded spaces, having to stand for prolonged periods or sleep on the floor, being deprived food and water for up to 24 hours, and frequent confiscation of personal mobile phones and identification documents. The LAF also detained rescued Syrian refugees overnight when they were still in wet clothing and expelled them to Syria forcing them to walk barefoot throughout the entire journey.
Interviewees who had been detained and expelled by Cypriot authorities also described Cypriot officers beating them, including in one case with the use of a baton and a taser. Cypriot authorities detained individuals in uncovered spaces where they had to sleep on the ground, in some cases for up to two nights. Individuals were routinely zip-tied during transit irrespective of whether restraints were necessary. In one case where Cypriot Coast Guards detained a boat at sea for a day, Syrian refugees on board were not provided food.
Arbitrary Arrest and Detention
Article 9 of the ICCPR and article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights protect an individual’s rights to due process and to be free from arbitrary arrest and detention. These rights apply to any individual, regardless of the circumstances of entry to or legal residency status in a country.
The UN Human Rights Committee has clarified that article 9 protects against not only “unlawful” arrest or detention, but also those that are unreasonable, unnecessary or disproportionate.[229] The Human Rights Committee says that detention of asylum seekers who enter a country unlawfully is arbitrary if it is done for longer than a brief period to document their entry, record their claims, and determine their identity unless there are particular reasons to detain “specific to the individual, such as an individualized likelihood of absconding, a danger of crimes against others or a risk of acts against national security.”[230] Furthermore, the ICCPR and European Convention on Human Rights require states to inform the individual of the reasons for arrest or detention, and provide prompt access to (1) judicial proceedings to challenge its lawfulness, (2) lawyers, and (3) family members.[231]
Article 31 of the 1951 Refugee Convention states that countries “shall not impose penalties” against refugees “on account of their illegal entry or presence” provided they “present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.” The UN Special Rapporteur on torture has cautioned that “breaches of immigration laws are essentially administrative in nature and do not constitute crimes…that might justify…the deprivation of liberty.”[232] The UN Committee against Torture has also stated that detention of asylum seekers “should always be an exceptional measure based on an individual assessment and subject to regular review.”[233] Similarly, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention emphasized that immigration detention must be “justified by a legitimate purpose, such as documenting entry and recording claims or initial verification of identity if in doubt.”[234]
Lebanese authorities assert that the legal basis for the detention of those who attempt irregular departures from Lebanon is the 1962 Law Regulating Entry, Residence, and Exit from Lebanon.[235] Specifically, article 16 provides that Lebanese territory may only be left through public security centers, and article 33 for punishment of up to three months for those who violate the provision. In a submission to the UN on protections for migrants, Lebanon made clear that, contrary to international norms above, immigration in the country is governed by criminal, rather than administrative law, and that “arresting and detaining illegal migrants aims generally to punish them as they have committed a criminal act….”[236]
Commenting on Lebanon’s compliance with its obligations to asylum seekers and refugees, the UNHCR has emphasized that “with respect to illegal entry or stay, the detention of asylum-seekers and refugees should be avoided and be a measure of last resort.” They specifically called on Lebanon to amend the 1962 Law “with a view to de-penalizing the illegal entry or presence of asylum-seekers” and to “[e]stablish a clear and comprehensive legal framework to ensure that asylum-seekers and refugees are not arbitrarily detained.”[237]
The accounts described above in sections III and VI demonstrate that Lebanon and Cyprus arrested and indiscriminately detained Syrian refugees to stem their irregular movements and to facilitate their summary expulsions. All interviewees arrested in Lebanon were apprehended (and for most, summarily expelled following detention) when they had attempted to depart irregularly; in Cyprus, detained interviewees were invariably expelled collectively.
Facilitation of summary expulsion is not a legitimate purpose that justifies the use of deprivation of liberty and detention. Their use, as happened both in Cyprus and Lebanon, is therefore arbitrary whether or not a formal legal basis exists in domestic law. Moreover, as most Syrian refugees in Lebanon have almost no practical option to travel legally, the blanket use of detention as de facto punishment for their irregular movement is unreasonable and disproportionate.
The lack of procedural safeguards at the time of the interviewees’ detention also points to the arbitrary nature of the detentions. For example no interviewee was fully informed by Lebanese or Cypriot authorities of the legal basis for their arrest and detention; neither Lebanese nor Cypriot authorities detained the interviewees for genuine administrative processing needs, as neither had any process to identify refugee status or protection needs or to properly record the interviewees’ requests for asylum. In addition, neither authority offered the interviewees avenues to challenge their deprivation of liberty or opportunities to contact family members or lawyers.
Following visits to Cypriot detention centers in May 2023, the CPT criticized Cyprus’s use of immigration detention against irregular arrivals, saying, “subjecting foreign nationals to appalling living conditions and regimes in reception centres and police stations … found during the CPT’s visit is contrary to European values and international human rights law.”[238]
The Right to Leave
Article 12(2) of the ICCPR, mirrored in article 2(2) of Protocol 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, provides that “[e]veryone shall be free to leave any country, including his own.”[239] The right to leave applies to any individual in any territory, regardless of their nationality or legal status, as the UN Human Rights Committee confirms: “the scope of [article 12(2)] is not restricted to persons lawfully within the territory of a State.”[240]
While the right to leave is not absolute, article 12(2)’s language is self-standing insofar as it does not require a person to prove they have a right to enter a particular receiving state, in order to exercise the right to leave. The Human Rights Committee has also stated that “[f]reedom to leave the territory of a State may not be made dependent on any specific purpose.”[241]
Article 12(2) of the ICCPR entails an obligation on states to issue travel documents. The UN Human Rights Committee has recognized that “[s]ince international travel usually requires appropriate documents, in particular a passport, the right to leave a country must include the right to obtain the necessary travel documents.”[242] While the “issuing of passports is normally incumbent on the State of nationality,”[243] states of transit or temporary stay may still have certain obligations to issue other forms of documents to allow onward travel of non-nationals. International legal experts have posited that transit states are obliged to issue travel documents to asylum seekers and refugees, given that the right to leave is applicable to “everyone.”[244]
Syrian refugees in Lebanon therefore enjoy the right to leave and cannot be stripped of it on the basis of their status as refugees, regardless of whether or not they have regularized legal status in Lebanon, or of Syria or Lebanon’s unwillingness to provide them with travel documents.
The ICCPR does not permit measures that restrict the right to leave unless they are (1) provided by laws that use precise criteria,[245] (2) necessary and proportionate to protect a legitimate aim which article 12(3) ICCPR defines as “national security, public order (ordre public), public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others,”[246] and (3) consistent with other ICCPR rights.[247] The UN Human Rights Committee has emphasized that restrictions must be “the least intrusive” among all options and they “must not impair the essence of the right” such that the freedom to leave is rendered an exception rather than the norm.[248]
In the context of migration controls, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture has stated that:
“Pullback” operations are designed to physically prevent migrants from leaving the territory of their State of origin or a transit State…or to forcibly return them to that territory before they can reach the jurisdiction of their destination State. … By their very nature, pullbacks prevent migrants from exercising their rights to leave any country or territory, not to be detained arbitrarily, to seek and enjoy asylum, and to have individual rights and duties determined in a due process proceeding.[249]
Any border control measures that Lebanon imposes with the effect of restricting or regulating the right of Syrians to leave must therefore satisfy the three ICCPR requirements stated above.
Lebanon’s detention of the people Human Rights Watch interviewed at, or en route, to boat departure locations is an integral element of the pullback measures that interfered with the Syrian refugees’ right to leave.
As set out above, Lebanese authorities assert that the legal basis for the summary pullbacks and detentions is the 1962 Law. However none of the interviewees were told the laws pursuant to which they were being detained, nor were they brought before any judicial procedure.
It is far from clear that the 1962 Law would meet the criteria to be a sufficient legal basis under international law to justify the exercise of detention powers. However, even assuming it is, detaining Syrian refugees on that basis, including the reason for their detention and their ill-treatment during detention, should render the detentions unnecessary and disproportionate to the refugees’ actions in seeking to exercise their right to leave.
While preventing irregular departures might have stated legitimate aims, such as combatting migrant smuggling, or preventing dangerous sea journeys, the means to achieve those aims needs to be proportionate. The manner in which pullbacks are conducted – often accompanied by prohibited abusive treatment, leading to violations of rights beyond that of the right to leave – renders the pullbacks disproportionate. Lebanon’s confiscation of the interviewees’ passports and/or identification documents during or after the pullbacks would also be a further violation of the right to leave, to the extent that the confiscations lack a clear legal basis.
Finally, for Syrian refugees, the effective exercise of the right to leave is a precondition to exercising another fundamental right: the right to seek asylum. As mentioned above, Lebanon has imposed coercive conditions on Syrians that has led them to decide to leave, and those same conditions also render them without legal status to travel through regularized channels. Further, Human Rights Watch is not aware of any policy by the Lebanese government to issue travel documents to Syrian refugees, many of whom cannot approach the Syrian regime for a new passport. In those circumstances where Lebanon already leaves Syrian refugees with no option to travel legally, pullbacks conducted against the interviewees are effectively a complete ban on their exit.
The Human Rights Committee has pointed out that “[l]iberty of movement is an indispensable condition for the free development of a person.”[250] In the same spirit, Syrian refugees’ liberty to seek a better life or refuge elsewhere should be respected, particularly as they continue to live under dire socio-economic conditions in Lebanon, which has long refused to recognize itself as a host country for Syrian populations.
Rights of Children
Cypriot authorities did not treat Habib, an unaccompanied child asylum seeker, in accordance with international standards regarding the best interests of children and age-appropriate treatment of child asylum seekers.
Under article 3(1) of the Convention of the Rights of the Child,[251] to which Cyprus is party, states are obligated to treat the best interests of the child as a primary consideration “[i]n all actions concerning children.” This obligation is an interpretive legal principle and a rule of procedure,[252] applicable to “every action taken by a public institution.”[253]
UNHCR guidelines calls for unaccompanied children seeking asylum to have the benefit of specific, age-appropriate procedures to protect their best interests and needs.[254] Those procedures should ensure that unaccompanied children are not detained; that they are handled by specially trained officials, be assessed for physical or psychosocial needs, and be given appropriate care as needed.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child sets forth other rights that Cypriot and Lebanese authorities failed to ensure, including the right of children to protection from all forms of violence,[255] the specific protections that should be afforded to children who are seeking asylum,[256] and the prohibition on return to irreparable harm.[257]
VIII. European Migration Control Funding and Support
On May 2, 2024, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced €1 billion in financial assistance to Lebanon through 2026, which included money to the “Lebanese Armed Forces and other security forces with equipment and training for border management and to fight against smuggling,” according to the Commission’s press release.[258]
“We are committed to maintain legal pathways open to Europe and resettle refugees from Lebanon to the European Union,” von der Leyen said. She then said Europe would “count on” Lebanon’s “good cooperation to prevent illegal migration and combat migrant smuggling.”[259] A week later, Lebanon’s GSO announced new measures to further restrict the ability of Syrians to obtain legal status,[260] and reportedly stepped up raids, arrests, and expulsions.[261]
EU migration-control funding for Lebanese security actors is not new. Over the years, the EU and European countries have funded Lebanon’s border management capacity despite repeated reports of Lebanon’s summary expulsions and abuses against Syrian refugees. Typically, European funding has been provided to Lebanon in the form of capacity-building projects aimed at enhancing Lebanon’s border management and surveillance capabilities.
As set out below, those projects examined by Human Rights Watch almost invariably state they follow a “human rights-based approach,” and include human rights training components specifically aimed to improve Lebanese security agencies’ human rights compliance in their border management practices. Yet notably, and despite these principled claims, none of the projects contain direct mechanisms to independently monitor whether those agencies in fact complied with human rights standards in their border operations; nor do the projects include provisions to suspend funding if they did not. This funding model lacks effective firewalls to ensure European support is not enabling human rights violations.
The absence of human rights safeguards is particularly problematic as many projects explicitly aim to prevent irregular migration without due weight being given to individuals’ protection needs. Despite European donors’ lip service to human rights obligations, European funding to Lebanese security agencies for border management has continued while those same agencies have engaged in abusive pullbacks and summary expulsions of Syrian refugees.
EU-Lebanon Migration Funding Policies
While the EU has also provided significant humanitarian aid funding to Lebanon, migration control has long been a priority of cooperation agreements between the EU and Lebanon. A November 2016 EU-Lebanon cooperation agreement is aimed at “[s]trengthening the capacity of the relevant Lebanese authorities to manage borders and prevent irregular migration” as a priority.[262] The same priority is reflected in the EU’s Lebanon program funding for 2021-2027, which declares that “[a]dditional assistance is necessary to support Lebanon’s effort to address irregular migration, i.e. integrated border management and maritime sector governance, safety and security.”[263]
Since 2020, there have been at least four ongoing, multi-year projects geared toward building Lebanon’s border management capacity. The European Commission has funded two of those projects costing €13.5 million.[264] The Netherlands has provided €2.5 million for a third, while the fourth is funded by Switzerland, not an EU Member State, for €700,000.[265] Three of the projects are implemented by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), an intergovernmental organization separate from the EU.[266] One is implemented by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex).[267]
In addition to the above on-going projects, the European Commission allocated a further €32 million to fund upcoming border management capacity-building projects in Lebanon, to be implemented in the remainder of 2024 and in 2025. This figure includes €7 million which the Commission allocated in November 2023,[268] and €25 million allocated in August 2024,[269] following President von der Leyen’s May 2024 announcement of the €1 billion support package for Lebanon.
International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD)
The ICMPD consists of 21 countries, 16 of whom are EU members, and has a mandate to develop and implement “long-term strategies to cope with the migration phenomenon.”[270] Initially set up as a think tank, it has growingly engaged in operational activities on migration management. In 2023, the ICMPD had a total revenue of over €78.9 million, most of which was contributed by the European Commission.[271] While the ICMPD predominantly serves its member states and its donors, it is not itself an EU agency, and therefore not directly bound by EU human rights instruments or EU transparency frameworks. The “indirect management” process by which the EU outsources project implementation to external entities like the ICMPD obscures the EU‘s compliance with human rights standards.
The ICMPD is the co-developer of a “four-tier access control model” for Integrated Border Management (IBM) for the European Commission aimed at combatting irregular migration, among other objectives.[272] The first two tiers entail the EU implementing “measures taken in third countries” and “[a]greements with neighbouring countries on cooperation in the field of border management.”[273]
These are problematic hallmarks of border “externalization” – preventing irregular arrivals by outsourcing migration controls to third countries – which Human Rights Watch has consistently found to lead to human rights violations.[274] The ICMPD is implementing border management projects in countries such as Tunisia and Türkiye with well-documented records of violating the rights of refugees and asylum seekers.[275]
The ICMPD implements three ongoing IBM-related projects in Lebanon. The “EU IBM Lebanon” project commenced in 2012 and is currently in its third phase with an EU-Commission-funded budget of €7 million covering the period from 2020 to 2023.[276] According to an August 20, 2024 letter from the European Commission to Human Rights Watch, ICMPD will also be implementing a planned fourth phase of the project with a further €7 million in budget.[277] The third phase’s objectives include enhancing Lebanon’s “border governance” through assisting Lebanon’s establishment of “border procedures in order to improve prevention and detection of irregular migration.”[278]
On February 3, 2024, Human Rights Watch submitted an application to the European Commission pursuant to the EU’s transparency legislation, requesting access to documents related to the EU IBM Lebanon project. Upon the Commission’s request, Human Rights Watch twice agreed to reduce the application’s scope and offered to first obtain a list of relevant documents from which Human Rights Watch could further narrow down select documents to receive.[279] At the time of publication, the Commission is three months beyond the legal time limit for complying with the access request,[280] and has not produced a single document related to the EU IBM Lebanon project.
The Lebanese Center for Human Rights (CLDH), a local Lebanese nongovernmental organization, published a report in July 2023 on European funding and support in Lebanon’s border control capacities.[281] CLDH obtained and published a batch of documents related to the EU IBM Lebanon project. Human Rights Watch examined the documents to delineate the precise scope of assistance provided to Lebanese security actors under the EU IBM Lebanon project.
In particular, a 2022 Action Plan outlined the ICMPD’s intention to assist the LAF in “[n]egotiating and drafting [of] international cooperation agreements/treaties in the field of border surveillance (e.g. Frontex);”[282] and in assisting the GSO on concluding “international agreements in the field of border checks, prevention of irregular migration and readmission of irregular migrants.”[283] The Action Plan also entailed the ICMPD assisting the LAF to adopt a “unified border surveillance model,”[284] and creating a “Risk and Threats Analysis Unit related to border management” for the ISF.[285]
The Action Plan aimed to have Lebanon adopt a “Decree on Border Surveillance of the Lebanese-Syrian land border.”[286] It called for increasing LAF and ISF personnel engaged in border surveillance and specifically identified “[d]ecreased illegal crossings” as an indicator of achievement.[287] The plan also called for “the establishment of a canine (dog) unit within LAF” aimed at achieving an “[i]ncreased number of apprehended illegal immigrants.”[288]
Most worryingly, the Action Plan called for Lebanon to conclude a new bilateral customs cooperation agreement with Syria and for the ISF to enter into “[b]ilateral international agreement on police cooperation with the Syrian police forces,” by December 2023.[289] It even planned for Lebanon to conduct “joint border patrols at the Lebanese-Syrian border” after “the end of the conflict in Syria.”[290] While ICMPD project documents reference a “right[s] based approach” to the project, they are vague on what this entails.[291]
In its August 20, 2024 letter to Human Rights Watch, the European Commission said that the “human rights-based approach” in the EU IBM Lebanon project entailed the “aligning of Lebanon and its relevant entities to international standards through the establishment of the necessary legislative and institutional framework, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and capacity-building (through sensitization, trainings and the development of best practices).”[292]
Another ICMPD project, titled “Establishing Lebanon as a Driver of Regional Border Management Partnerships,” is funded by the Netherlands. It is currently in phase five, with a €2.5 million budget and a project duration of 36 months from March 2022 to February 2025.[293] According to an ICMPD project document, phases one to four of the project had been implemented since 2015, involving more than €300,000 of infrastructure and equipment provided to Lebanese border agencies, and other support in the form of training, workshops and conferences in border governance expertise.[294] Phase five’s overall objective is to facilitate the LAF’s lead role in strengthening “regional border management capacities.”[295] Again, the project document states that the “Action will promote rights-based approaches in all of its activities,” but does not explain what that means and how it will be ensured.[296]
Worryingly, according to the IMCPD’s 2023 Annual Narrative Progress Report for the Dutch-funded project,[297] one emphasis of the project was to facilitate strong regional exchange in border practices between Lebanon and Tunisia – another country whose security forces have been found by Human Rights Watch to have committed serious abuses against refugees and asylum seekers, including pullbacks and collective expulsions, while receiving significant EU funding.[298]The ICMPD facilitated at least three study visits in 2023 between Lebanese and Tunisian border authorities, during which the two delegations exchanged experiences in border management, including on “[i]rregular migration trends, challenges faced on land and sea and approaches to this phenomenon.”[299]
ICMPD also delivered human rights training courses to LAF, ISF, and GSO personnel under the Dutch-funded project.[300] Yet, apart from indicating the number of attendees in the Progress Report, neither it nor the project planning document included any basis for measuring whether the training translated to real human rights compliance in Lebanon’s border actions. The omission is particularly concerning as many abuses committed by Lebanese security actors against Syrian refugees and asylum seekers had continued between June and September 2023, after ICMPD supposedly delivered the above training in May 2023.
Both the EU IBM Lebanon project and the Dutch-funded project reveal troubling externalization trends. The former places a heavy emphasis on stemming irregular migration without correspondingly recognizing protection needs, which risks encouraging unlawful pullbacks and expulsions. The latter’s objectives to prop up Lebanon as a regional provider of expertise in border management and foster close ties with Tunisia risk entrenching European externalization in the Global South aimed at blocking and diverting migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers from reaching Europe without providing effective protection alternatives.
A third ICMPD project, titled “Supporting Lebanon in fostering human rights-based border and migration management,” is funded by Switzerland with a €700,000 budget and a projection duration of 18 months from October 2021 to March 2023.[301] Switzerland, a non-EU member, is one of the ICMPD’s founding members. This project is in its third phase, with the first two also funded by Switzerland and implemented from 2016 to 2021.[302] According to the project’s final report, the project achieved “[i]ncreased capacities and expertise in Human Rights, International Migration Law, International Humanitarian Law, and protection-related considerations,” largely through training courses delivered to personnel in Lebanese border agencies.[303] An ICMPD document highlights that the project’s first two phases improved GSO’s “capacities to tackle migrant vulnerabilities at the Masnaa [crossing point] with the construction of a fully equipped safe shelter for intercepted irregular/smuggled migrants.”[304]
The Swiss-funded project does not appear to include a monitoring mechanism to assess whether the Lebanese beneficiaries have in fact complied with human rights standards in their operations, a particularly curious omission for a project explicitly aimed at improving human rights compliance.[305] Where project documents contain sections detailing risk analysis or risk management, they do not mention potential or reported human rights violations by Lebanese security agencies.[306]
In an August 20, 2024 letter to Human Rights Watch, the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) confirmed that its grant agreements with the ICMPD did not oblige ICMPD to report on human rights risks or violations committed by Lebanese security actors benefiting from the project, nor did SEM have specific mechanisms to suspend project implementation if Lebanese beneficiaries were implicated in human rights violations. However, SEM stated that the ICMPD was “contractually obliged” to inform SEM of circumstances that might jeopardize the project’s object or implementation, and if they existed, SEM could terminate the grant agreement under its terms.[307] Regarding the abuses documented in this report, SEM said it had received and assessed related reports, and continuously “advocated with the Lebanese authorities to uphold the principle[s] of non-refoulement, … international law, [and] procedural safeguards and due process.”[308]
The inherent and unacceptable contradiction is obvious: as the ICMPD continued receiving sizeable project funding and hailing the Lebanese security agencies’ “significant progress” in human rights compliance, the very same agencies continued to commit abuses against Syrian refugees. The Masnaa crossing, which the ICMPD hailed for having provided a “fully equipped safe shelter,” has been used to facilitate the refoulement of refugees returned by Cyprus, as documented above. According to CLDH,[309] the “safe shelter” there has ended up being used to park cars (SEM told Human Rights Watch that, to its knowledge, the shelter was used consistently with its intended purpose until at least January 2020, after which SEM has not actively followed up on its use).[310] SEM confirmed with Human Rights Watch that, following the completion of the project’s latest phase, “Switzerland has not supported or planned any border management project in Lebanon.”[311]
The EU-funded and Dutch-funded Lebanon IBM projects equally do not appear to contain any direct mechanism to ensure that European assistance is not complicit in, does not contribute to, or perpetuate, violations committed by Lebanese security agencies. For the EU-funded IBM project, Human Rights Watch examined 10 project documents, including the Action Plan mentioned above, Project Steering Committee meeting minutes and ICMPD regular reports submitted to the European Commission.[312] None contain a human rights assessment component nor mention any human rights issues on the part of the Lebanese beneficiaries. The Dutch-funded IBM project carries the same omissions in 25 project documents examined by Human Rights Watch, including the project planning document,[313] Working Arrangement signed between ICMPD and the Netherlands,[314] Project Protocol signed between the LAF and ICMPD,[315] 11 ICMPD monthly reports in 2021,[316] 9 ICMPD monthly reports in 2023,[317] the 2019-2021 Final Narrative Progress Report,[318] and the 2023 Annual Narrative Progress Report.[319]
According to an August 16, 2024 letter to Human Rights Watch, ICMPD said that while it “is not producing human rights impact assessment reports within the project it implements … potential human rights impact is assessed during [project] design phase and all throughout implementation.”[320] ICMPD also said that it was “overhauling its project cycle management system which will further strengthen [ICMPD’s] due diligence processes and will be rolled out in autumn this year.”[321] It further maintained that “ICMPD adopts a comprehensive approach to ensuring human rights compliance throughout the lifecycle of its projects, [including through] country context analyses, dialogues with stakeholders, and regular exchanges with our donors.”[322]
ICMPD further told Human Rights Watch that none of the violations documented in this report took place “in relation to any of the projects implemented by ICMPD in Lebanon,” that it had “not received any specific information” related to the violations beyond what had been publicly reported, and that any ICMPD activity that could involve human rights violations would violate ICMPD’s own code of conduct and that of its donors. ICMPD said its projects were indeed responsive to public reports of violations in Lebanon, highlighting that the projects reinforced a “rights-based approach to IBM coordination” and delivered human rights training courses that were developed with reference to guidelines issued by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.[323]
In its August 20, 2024 letter to Human Rights Watch, the European Commission said:
[T]he EU remains committed to working with Lebanon on a comprehensive approach to migration management, which entails creating regular migration pathways, tackling the root causes of irregular migration, combating migrant smuggling and trafficking of persons. […]
Developing the capacities of non-complying entities in order to bring them to the appropriate level of compliance forms integral part of the EU’s priorities and is the essence of all actions when supporting partner countries on principles and values that the EU is promoting.[324]
The European Commission further responded that “all reports and evaluations related to [the EU IBM project] have included a Human Rights dimension into the monitoring of performance and analysis of compliance.”[325] It maintained that “EU-funded interventions implemented by ICMPD…are closely followed by the European Commission, including via the EU Delegation in Beirut…Before each payment [to ICMPD], the EU carries out a verification of the financial and operational progress on the basis of narrative and financial reports submitted by the implementing partner.”[326]
At time of publication, the European Commission had allocated an additional €32 million to fund further Lebanon IBM projects in 2024 and 2025. A November 2023 Action Document allocated €7 million for those projects to be implemented in 2024,[327] and an August 2024 Action Document allocated €25 million for project implementation through 2025.[328]
The Commission decided to renew funding for Lebanon IBM projects even though it acknowledged, for two consecutive years, that previous project implementation “did not fully reflect the human rights-based approach.”[329] The Commission said that “Security actors benefiting from EU project[s] may act against international Human Rights standards.” The Commission identified this risk in the 2023 Action Document, and continued to identify essentially same risk in the 2024 Action Document.[330]
The Commission also noted that “the LAF Navy prevented in total the departure of 1500 migrants and refugees” in 2022,[331] and observed that the “onward movement of refugees from Syria to Cyprus via Lebanon has increased…some of whom were intercepted or rescued by the LAF” in 2023,[332] and that “administrative procedures by [Lebanese] security forces lack transparency, procedural guarantees and safeguards.”[333]
Despite all the observations above, the European Commission is more than doubling its funding to Lebanese security actors from 2023 to 2024, to pursue largely the same border management enhancement objectives in Lebanon,[334] and even envisaging “enhanced collaboration with European counter parts [and] increased cooperation with European agencies on border-related topics” in 2024 and beyond.[335]
Yet the Commission does not appear to be equally enhancing its approach to addressing human rights risks. The 2023 Action Document stated that those risks could be mitigated by providing Lebanese security actors with “[d]edicated trainings on Human Rights and international standards.”[336] The 2024 document repeatedly referenced the “human rights-based approach” and further included as mitigation measures “exchange with the UN on international standards” and “[r]eview of appropriateness of continuation of funding” in line with relevant EU regulations.[337] While the European Commission’s commitment, on paper, to conducting funding review is a positive, the 2023 and 2024 Action Documents fall well short of including more meaningful measures to address and remedy reports of violations. Years of European engagement in Lebanon has shown that Lebanese security actors have continued violations against Syrian refugees despite receiving so-called human rights trainings and the implementation of the “human rights-based approach” – neither of which could be used to shield European complicity in serious abuses.
European donor countries and entities must establish a robust, ongoing, and independent mechanism to monitor Lebanon’s human rights compliance and the impact of European actions in Lebanon. Such mechanism should impose operational consequences for any violations found, including the immediate suspension or termination of project implementation and funding. Capacity-building projects should include ending human rights violations as a progress indicator, the lack of which only flies in the face of any genuine “human rights-based approach.” These measures are particularly important when European support is delivered through external agencies not subject to usual European human rights safeguards. Without such measures, the inescapable conclusion is that EU and European member state donors are turning a blind eye to consistent violations committed by the Lebanese agencies that receive their support.
Frontex
The European Border and Coast Guard Agency, known as Frontex and responsible for managing the EU’s external border controls, implements the “EU4Border Security” project that targets the EU’s “Southern Neighbourhood countries,” including Lebanon.[338] It is ongoing until April 2025 and has a €6.5 million budget,[339] but is unclear what budgetary amount applies to the project’s Lebanon component. The project shares many similar objectives to the ICMPD-implemented IBM projects, including to implement the EU IBM model in the target countries, but with an emphasis on “close technical-operational collaboration between Southern Neighbourhood countries…and Frontex and EU Member States.”[340]
Human Rights Watch examined project documents obtained from Frontex through the EU’s transparency legislation. The documents are heavily redacted. Notable redacted sections include those that indicate Frontex’s ongoing or planned activities in target countries and risk/assumption tables that typically indicate anticipated difficulties in project implementation.[341] Based on the unredacted content, it appears Frontex has delivered training to Lebanese security agencies on border management areas and has held high-level meetings with those agencies,[342] but Human Rights Watch cannot confirm the full extent of Frontex’s involvement in Lebanon.
The Grant Agreement entered between the European Commission and Frontex for the project does not expressly require Frontex to carry out human rights assessment or report relevant violations to the Commission.[343] Frontex’s Annual Progress Report for 2023 submitted to the Commission, again provided in heavily redacted form to Human Rights Watch, does not indicate any reporting on human rights compliance issues.[344] It should however be noted that the EU regulation that governs Frontex’s operations imposes a duty on the agency to suspend or terminate any planned or ongoing Frontex activity if it violates, or could lead to violations of, fundamental rights.[345]
While Frontex’s activities in Lebanon remain opaque, they are set to increase. European Commission President von der Leyen, in announcing the €1 billion financial assistance package for Lebanon on May 2, 2024, said “it would be very helpful for Lebanon to conclude a working arrangement with Frontex, particularly on information exchange and situational awareness.”[346] An August 2024 European Commission Action Document stated that “the conclusion of a working arrangement [between Lebanon and] Frontex is under negotiation.”[347]
Recommendations
To the Lebanese Government and Related Ministries
Immediately halt all pullbacks and summary expulsions of Syrian refugees.
Uphold the right of Syrian refugees to leave any country, including by working with other governments and UNHCR to provide safe and legal pathways for the onward travel of Syrian refugees, allowing Syrians who do not currently have legal residency to regularize their status and issuing them with valid travel documents
End all practices of arrest, detention, and expulsion of Syrian refugees, including stateless habitual residents of Syria, that are administered solely on the basis of their lack of residency documents, lack of legal status, or attempts to leave Lebanon.
Safeguard the right of every person to challenge any decision relating to their detention or removal before a competent, impartial, and independent tribunal in an individualized, prompt, and transparent proceeding that affords essential procedural safeguards, in line with the ICCPR.
End the use or threat of expulsion or other disproportionate punishments as a threatened or effectuated sanction for irregular movement.
Conduct a transparent, thorough, and impartial investigation into allegations that Lebanese security agencies are involved in acts that put the lives and safety of migrants and asylum seekers at risk, including beatings and violence, confiscation of personal belongings, and collusion with smugglers and Syrian forces in the extortion of expelled individuals at the Wadi Khaled informal border crossing.
Rescind the May 2019 Higher Defense Council’s decision and all other decisions regarding the expulsion of Syrian refugees and respect the principle of nonrefoulement.
Allow UNHCR to resume registering Syrian asylum seekers to better manage their needs in Lebanon.
Do not participate in any ongoing or future readmission agreements, international cooperation agreements, or other activities that risk violating the rights of Syrian refugees, particularly the rights against refoulement, exposure to the risk of torture, persecution, and other ill-treatment, and the right to leave.
Ratify the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol.
To the Government and Related Ministries of the Republic of Cyprus
Immediately halt all pushbacks and collective expulsions.
Allow people to claim international protection at the border or upon arrival in the country. People on boats that are interdicted by Cypriot Coast Guards, whether in Cypriot or international waters, should be by allowed disembark in Cypriot territory and be provided with the opportunity to claim international protection in Cyprus.
Immediately resume the asylum processing for all Syrians currently in Cyprus.
Safeguard the right of every person to challenge any decision relating to their detention or removal before a competent, impartial, and independent tribunal in an individualized, prompt, and transparent proceeding that affords essential procedural safeguards, in line with the ICCPR, European Convention on Human Rights, and other European standards.
End the practice of sending Syrian refugees back to Lebanon, which risks resulting in chain-refoulement, whether from Cypriot territory or in the high seas. Cease performing any operations, and refrain from entering into any future, international agreements that relate to the readmission or maritime patrol activities where there is a real risk of violations of the principle of nonrefoulement.
Direct Cypriot Coast Guards to prioritize safety and life at sea in all its maritime operations, uphold their duty to rescue individuals in danger at sea and deliver them to a safe place where the individuals’ lives are not endangered including because of the risk of chain-refoulement, and immediately cease life-threatening practices in the interdiction of boats, including dangerous maneuvers, leaving boats to drift at sea, and the denial of food and water.
Issue clear and unequivocal directives to all Cypriot security agencies involved in the handling of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants that ill-treatment, including any excessive use of force, contravenes Cypriot and EU law and will not be tolerated, and require personnel to undergo training on relevant human rights norms.
Ensure accountability by investigating all allegations, and, where warranted, prosecuting any agents of Cypriot military, police, or other security agencies who have used or ordered excessive use of force, other ill-treatment, or other improper conduct in their treatment of migrants, asylum seekers, or refugees in their custody.
Direct border personnel to accept an individual’s declared age if there is a reasonable possibility that the person is a child. In such cases, border personnel should expeditiously transfer those individuals to the care of child protection authorities and assigned a guardian at the earliest time. Ensure age-appropriate treatment conducted according to international standards, including refraining from detaining child asylum seekers.
To the European Union and EU Member States
Call on the Cypriot government to urgently end to collective expulsions at its borders and to individual deportations without adequate protections and due process.
Clearly state no parts of Syria are safe for dignified returns for those who fled the conflict to seek protection in neighboring countries or in the EU.
Hold Cyprus accountable for human rights violations against migrants and asylum seekers, including through public reporting and taking steps to monitor it is acting in full compliance with its human rights obligations, including through allowing full and unhindered access of UNHCR monitoring staff and other independent observers to ports of entry and formal or informal detention centers in Cyprus.
Develop public human rights impact assessment criteria and press Cyprus to allow an independent reporting mechanism to ensure that EU funding to Cyprus does not contribute to human rights violations in the context of border management.
Make more resources available to support Syrian asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants in Lebanon.
Increase refugee resettlement places for Syrian refugees in Lebanon and establish and provide more complementary pathways for safe, legal, and orderly migration of Syrians and other third country nationals and stateless people from Syria for family reunification, education, and employment.
To Donor Governments (including the EU and EU Member States)
Call on the Lebanese government to put an immediate end to pullbacks and summary expulsion without adequate protections and due process.
Ensure that support to the Lebanese security agencies is not used for operations that contribute to summary expulsions, preventing legitimate exercise of the rights to leave and to seek asylum, arbitrary arrest and detention, or ill-treatment incompatible with international standards on the treatment of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees.
Develop ongoing independent, public human rights impact assessment to ensure that all current and future support, whether provided directly to Lebanon or indirectly through external entities, does not contribute to human rights violations in the context of border management, as well as independent, public human rights reporting mechanism on the impact on human rights of migration management funding provided directly to Lebanese security forces and to external entities implementing border management projects in Lebanon.
Condition all current and future direct or indirect support to Lebanese security agencies on their satisfactory human rights compliance in the context of their migration management activities, including by suspending or terminating such support if those agencies are found to be committing human rights violations.
Commit to and provide proper transparency on migration-related support provided to Lebanon.
Continue to clearly state that no parts of Syria are safe for returns and ensure that member states respect their obligations under international law and not forcibly return refugees to Syria or support policies in third countries that could lead to forced returns to Syria.
To All Governments
Make more resources available to support Syrian asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants in Lebanon.
Increase refugee resettlement places for Syrian refugees in Lebanon and establish and provide more complementary pathways for safe, legal, and orderly migration of Syrians and other third country nationals and stateless people from Syria for family reunification, education, and employment.
Acknowledgments
This report was researched and written by a researcher in the Refugee and Migrant Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. Nadia Hardman, researcher in the Refugee and Migrant Rights Division, Bill Frelick, director of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Division, reviewed and edited the report. Gabriela Ivens, head of open source research for the Digital Investigations Lab, and Devon Lum, former research assistant for the Digital Investigations Lab, carried out open source research and boat tracking data analysis for the report. Zach Campbell, senior surveillance researcher in the Technology and Human Rights team, investigated potential involvement of border surveillance assets, and assisted with pursuing freedom of information requests under the EU’s transparency legislation.
Specialist reviews were provided by Ramzi Kaiss, researcher in the Middle East and North Africa Division, Hiba Zayadin, senior researcher in the Middle East and North Africa Division, Adam Coogle, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Division, Judith Sunderland, associate director in the Europe and Central Asia Division, Philippe Dam, advocacy director in the Europe and Central Asia Division, Friederike Mager, EU Advocacy coordinator, Emilie McDonnell, UK Advocacy and Communications officer, Michael Garcia Bochenek, senior counsel to the Children’s Rights Division, Regina Tamés, deputy director of the Women’s Rights Division, Aruna Kashyap, associate director of the Economic Justice and Rights Division, and Sam Dubberley, director of the Technology, Rights and Investigations Division.
Aisling Reidy, senior legal advisor, and Babatunde Olugboji, deputy program director, provided legal and program reviews.
Michelle Randhawa, senior officer in the Refugee and Migrant Rights Division, provided editing and production assistance. Additional production assistance was provided by Travis Carr, publications officer.
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