NEED TO KNOW
The Cooling Welcome
MIDDLE EAST
Life has never been easy for the 12 million Syrian refugees who fled their country’s brutal civil war since it broke out in 2011. That doesn’t mean their lives can’t become harder, though.
In neighboring countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, refugees who have fled the fighting between rebel forces and the repressive regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad are facing new challenges that are making them feel unwelcome.
Oussama and Hala, two siblings, for example told the National they were forced to move out of their apartment in the northern village of Raashine in Lebanon after their landlord refused to give them a new lease because they could not produce residency papers. The Lebanese government was taking too long to issue the documents. They took to living on the streets next to their home.
“It’s suffocating,” said Oussama of their inevitable eviction. “They make it difficult for us to renew our residencies because they don’t want Syrians in Lebanon. The goal is to prevent us from living here.”
They are part of a much larger wave of expulsions, with at least 3,865 Syrians being forcibly evicted from Lebanese villages since April, according to the Access Centre for Human Rights, which monitors and documents human rights abuses of Syrian refugees displaced by home country’s civil war.
Critics within Lebanon have slammed the government for issuing diplomas to unregistered Syrian students, too, saying the move could lead to more refugees becoming Lebanese citizens, reported the New Arab. Other proposals could prevent Syrian refugee children from even receiving an education, according to the Arab News.
The United Nations, meanwhile, has approved a Lebanese plan to repatriate 30,000 Syrian refugees even though Assad’s forces continue to commit human rights violations against his people, Middle East Monitor wrote.
Many Syrian refugees in Jordan are similarly living in limbo.
Jordanian leaders have publicly groused about the cost of supporting the 1.4 million Syrians who have sought asylum in the Middle Eastern country – a number equal to 14 percent of Jordan’s population, noted the Middle East Forum.
With the UN’s aid to Jordan falling short by $264 million, Jordan has cut monthly food stipends for Syrian refugees from $32 to $21, for example, for example, World Politics Review explained.
Jordan also hiked the price of work permits for Syrian refugees from $14 to $700 and increased social insurance fees, the New Humanitarian reported. For many refugees, the costs are an “insurmountable obstacle” that will force them to consider moving elsewhere if they want to be able to make a living and feed their families.
In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who cut ties with Assad in 2012, is now considering making up with the Syrian president after popular support for Turkey’s hosting of 3.1 million Syrian refugees declined sharply, wrote the Times. A few months ago, for example, three days of anti-Syrian riots erupted in central Turkey after a Syrian man allegedly sexually abused a seven-year-old Syrian girl, Al Jazeera wrote.
In a move that is likely designed to satisfy public sentiments, Erdogan is now also deporting undocumented Syrians back to the warzone they recently fled, the Economist added. That’s because a solid majority of Turks want them to return to their country. But the violence is new.
As the Economist added, some of the anti-Syrian sentiment across the region has to do with the prevailing economic crisis, while in Turkey, some fear the cultural impact. But the Syrians themselves, many of whom have lived in their adopted countries now for more than a decade, say they are easy targets.
“The (economic) crisis makes us perfect scapegoats,” one Syrian transplant in Turkey told Le Monde.
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