Syrian refugees in Lebanon: Protection amidst crises

ADMIGOV paper 2020

Protection is a broad term often practiced by a multitude of formal and informal organizations, states, and humanitarian actors through local, national, and global efforts. However, protection remains hard to define or encompass through a fixed set of tools and approaches, and the situation on the ground can often be elusive to researchers, humanitarian actors, governance sectors, and the general public. In Lebanon, Syrian refugees are referred to as “temporary displaced persons”, and Lebanon has reiterated that it’s not a country of asylum, rather one of transit (Fakhoury, 2017; LCRP, 2019; Lebanon Support, 2020). Having not ratified the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees nor its 1967 protocol, the Lebanese government has declared its right to sovereignty regarding the determination of status according to Lebanese laws and regulations (LCRP, 2019). This has been met with opposition from several humanitarian actors, such as UNHCR, and NGOs, that have argued that the refugee status is important for garnering aid (Janmyr, 2018). Since protection manifests itself differently for Syrians that aren’t ‘registered as refugees’ (also called de facto refugees), we agree with Janmyr (2018) that the usage of the term refugees is a necessity for protection, and will address them as such in this work.