Lebanon’s economic crisis endures, as does the EU’s ‘fear’ of refugees

Lebanon and the Lebanese people are still suffering a debilitating economic crisis that has gripped the country since 2019.

The pound has plummeted to less than 10 percent of its value before the crisis, savings have disappeared both in terms of exchange rates and actual deposits as banks announce they have no cash to release, and more and more people worry about simply staying alive.

About 80 percent of the population is below the poverty line and 36 percent is below the “extreme poverty line”, living on less than $2.15 a day.

A recent deal worth 1 billion euros ($1.06bn) with the European Union may have been seen as a godsend in such circumstances, but it has brought to the fore even more problems.

‘Shameful’

EU grants over the past three years are not purely to help Lebanon’s economy.

Rather, they are mostly to “ensure the wellbeing of host communities and Syrian refugees”, as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. Nearly three-quarters of the package is earmarked for that in hopes that refugees will be dissuaded from heading for Europe.

Lebanon has taken in millions of Syrian refugees who have fled their country’s 13-year war.

As more Lebanese people found their lives devastated by the economic crisis, hostility towards refugees has risen, encouraged by a public campaign backed by mainstream Lebanese media and state figures.

The EU package was strongly criticised by human rights workers and analysts, who said the deal rewards the state’s financial mismanagement and mistreatment of the Syrian community.

More than 300 Syrians have returned – or been returned – to their home country in what Lebanese authorities call a “voluntary return” programme.

But rights groups have panned the initiative, which comes off the back of 13,000 forced deportations of Syrians in 2023 alone, violence towards refugees in Lebanon and ongoing conflict in Syria itself.

“Human Rights Watch has documented the summary deportation of thousands of Syrians in 2023 and [the] deportation of opposition activists and army defectors this year,” Ramzi Kaiss, a researcher in the Middle East and North Africa Division at the right group, told Al Jazeera.

“Among those documented deportations were Syrians who were attempting to flee Lebanon by sea and returned to Lebanon by the Lebanese armed forces and subsequently deported.

“The fact that the EU would provide funds to encourage that behaviour is shameful.”

‘Asking people to starve’

Another enduring issue in Lebanon renders the assistance less than helpful.

“The biggest problem is the total absence of accountability,”  Karim Emile Bitar, professor of international relations at Saint Joseph’s University in Beirut, told Al Jazeera. “Even the Lebanese minister of finance acknowledged that local corruption could be a major [issue].”

The country’s poor do not benefit from money coming into the country, left to fend for themselves.