The Middle East hosts the highest per capita number of refugees and displaced persons in the world, and nowhere is this more acutely felt than in Lebanon. But Lebanon’s refugee protection frameworks are under growing pressure: international donor support has shrunk amid its economic crisis, UN agencies face mounting funding risks, and human rights are increasingly imperilled by political pressure. At the same time, Lebanon and Syria are experiencing a diplomatic shift following the collapse of the Assad regime in late 2024 and the formation of a reform-oriented government in Beirut.
This already fragile context has been compounded by the resumption of Israeli–Hezbollah war in March 2026, which has displaced over one million Lebanese and placed acute pressure on the new government.
For the more than one million Syrian refugees still in Lebanon, conditions are dire: no legal status, rising hostility and mounting demands for return without adequate safeguards. Some European governments, most notably Cyprus, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands, have argued that Lebanon is ‘safe enough’ for rejected asylum seekers. Yet landmark October 2024 judgments from the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights rejected Lebanon’s designation as a ‘safe third country’ and warned that returns risk indirect refoulement and inhuman treatment.
Lebanese political parties have often pushed for swift returns, often scapegoating refugees for the country’s many crises. The potential now for meaningful and sovereign relations with Syria require more than ad hoc mechanisms. What is needed is a formalized Technical Coordination Roadmap between Beirut and Damascus rooted in legal clarity and human rights safeguards.
Lessons from Lebanon’s informal refugee governance
Lebanon is not a signatory to the 1951 Geneva Convention and has never adopted a national asylum framework, instead relying on UNHCR to register and assist refugees until that process was suspended in 2015. This deliberate informality has kept refugee rights vulnerable to political bargaining. The million-plus Syrians in Lebanon are not formally recognised as refugees and lack basic rights to work and mobility. Shifting residency rules now leave 80 percent of families without valid legal status, while more than 16,000 refugees have had their UNHCR status ‘inactivated’ following brief returns to Syria, illustrating the failure of non-durable repatriation.
Refugee governance is fragmented among the Ministry of Social Affairs, the Ministry of Interior and Municipalities, and hundreds of individual municipalities. The transition towards a civilian-led mechanism under Minister of Social Affairs Haneen Sayed, and the Deputy Prime Minister’s opening of a new diplomatic process with Syria, signal a ‘new era’ – yet both governments must prevent the threat of summary deportation, from shifting overnight. In 2025, approximately 67 percent of verified returns occurred under duress rather than because of genuine improvements in conditions.
In tandem, the humanitarian model long compensating for weak state governance is under severe strain. The 2025 Lebanon Response Plan is significantly underfunded, secondary healthcare has been suspended for 45,000 refugees, and the NGOs that have long shouldered this burden now face massive budget cuts. The result is a governance vacuum leaving both refugees and host communities in deepening precarity.
What is at stake: Intersecting vulnerabilities, uncertain futures
Lebanon’s informal refugee response has produced overlapping vulnerabilities. Fewer than 20 percent of Syrian youth are enrolled in secondary education, with language barriers, documentation requirements and overcrowded classrooms blocking access and closing off future opportunity. Women fleeing domestic violence, stateless children, older persons and people with disabilities face heightened risks, whether in Lebanon or upon return to Syria.
These vulnerabilities are compounded by deteriorating conditions on both sides of the border. In Syria, political transition has not brought security: human rights monitors report an uptick in revenge killings, arbitrary detentions and targeted reprisals, while only 57 percent of Syria’s hospitals were functional as of late 2025. In Lebanon, crackdowns on undocumented refugees are intensifying, municipalities have expanded checkpoints and raids, and in May 2024 alone, more than 400 Syrians were deported by the Lebanese army, often without due process or humanitarian oversight.
Syria’s trajectory is nonetheless shifting: the gradual lifting of US and EU economic sanctions through 2025, alongside growing Gulf and European investment interest, has created cautious optimism about recovery. UNHCR targeted 1.5 million returns for 2025, a figure that fell short due to funding gaps. For some refugees, Syria may eventually offer more stability than a Lebanon destabilised by renewed conflict, making it more urgent than ever for Beirut to enable voluntary and dignified return.
Hopeful signals amid an alarming context
The policy environment in Lebanon is increasingly contradictory. State and municipal authorities are accelerating returns, often labelled voluntary but lacking credible guarantees, while UNHCR’s monitoring capacity has been diminished by budget constraints and national safeguards remain weak or non-existent. Social hostility is mounting: refugees face exclusion from public spaces, harassment and scapegoating, while eviction orders and fines in some municipalities have created an atmosphere of intimidation, one amplified rather than tempered by the pressures of the current conflict.
Still, signs of resilience remain. Refugees continue to rely on cross-border movement and informal networks to meet basic needs, demonstrating an adaptability that formal policy has consistently failed to match. The new government’s public embrace of reform, however tentative, and however tested by renewed conflict, creates a narrow but real window for structured dialogue with Syria on mobility and return.
The need for a roadmap
Informality enables impunity: when there is no clear policy, accountability is easily evaded. The current political moment offers an opportunity to replace ambiguity with legal clarity and shared responsibility, built around Technical Coordination Roadmap involving Lebanon’s Ministry of Social Affairs, the Syrian Transitional Government’s Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, and a quadripartite commission including UNHCR and refugee representatives. The Lebanese Ministry of Social Affairs has emerged as a rights-oriented actor championing a protection-centred approach; the government must build on this to ground its response to refugees, migrants and citizens alike in protection in the current war and its aftermath.
Predictable residency rules, transparent documentation procedures and universal civil registration are foundational. Return frameworks must be grounded in safety and dignity rather than political expediency and monitored by independent legal actors. A formal ‘Go-and-See’ visit framework, modelled on the 2025 Turkish experience, would allow families to assess property and living conditions in Syria without losing legal protection status in Lebanon. Lebanon’s practice of discretionary, short-term renewals of protection measures for undocumented refugees must be replaced by a formal legal instrument, protection that is permanently provisional serves no one. Above all, reform must centre the lived experiences of displaced people: policies designed without understanding the social drivers of return will only reproduce the very harms they seek to solve.
Next Steps
Reform for refugee rights must be structured, realistic and rooted in the diverse needs of refugees and not treat people like a monolithic group. The emerging Syrian–Lebanese dialogue led by the Lebanese government and Deputy Prime Minister should replace Beirut’s ‘policy of no-policy’ with a framework of legal clarity and institutional responsibility. Such a commission should develop predictable residency rules, regulate cross-border mobility and security guarantees backed by independent monitors. The dialogue must also address cross-border mobility for safe movement and access to healthcare and education, given the limited functionality of Syria’s healthcare system and the large proportion of Syrian youth out of secondary school.
Structured and deliberate dialogue between Beirut and Damascus remains critical. It is an opportunity to build a rights-based policy that replaces ambiguity with a framework centred on dignity, security and long-term stability, one that covers refugees, migrants and citizens alike.
