Not Without Dignity: Views of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon on Displacement, Conditions of Return, and Coexistence

A Study for the International Center for Transitional Justice:

Discussions about a future return of refugees and coexistence among groups currently at war in Syria must begin now, even in the face of ongoing violence and displacement. This report, based on interviews with refugees, makes it clear that the restoration of dignity will be important to creating the necessary conditions for return and peaceful coexistence — and building a stable post-war Syria one day.

Download the full report in English here.
Download the executive summary in Arabic here.

June 12th, 2017

Armed conflict in Syria has displaced millions of people inside and outside of the country. When a political settlement to the conflict is eventually reached, the process of refugees returning to Syria and rebuilding their lives, relationships, and communities will be long and complex. However, discussions with displaced persons about return and coexistence can begin now, even in the face of ongoing violence and displacement.

This research report is based on interviews with refugees living in Lebanon and representatives of local and international organizations in both Lebanon and Turkey working on issues related to Syrian displacement. The report provides an important window into the experiences of refugees in Lebanon as well as their concerns, expectations, and priorities regarding conditions of return and coexistence.
The research findings highlight the harms experienced by Syrian refugees at both the individual and collective levels, including the loss of loved ones, houses, property, and businesses in Syria and difficult economic situations and discrimination in Lebanon. Displacement has had devastating impacts on families and led to broad social fragmentation, including sectarian and political divisions and rifts between those who left Syria and those who remained. The effects of conflict and displacement will be generational, as refugee children have been traumatized by their exposure to violence and largely deprived of education.

The findings also capture common priorities among Syrian refugees in Lebanon for return. Most do want to return, not just to Syria but to the regions and communities where they previously lived. Common preconditions for return include safety and security; shelter, livelihoods, and the physical reconstruction of homes and infrastructure; compensation or restitution for the loss of property and housing; the provision of education for children and youth; psychosocial support; and family reunification.

One positive development among refugees in Lebanon is that many youth engaged with local and international civil society organizations have acquired new skills and an openness to people with different religious and political beliefs that one day may contribute to rebuilding relationships in Syria.

Views about the potential for coexistence and justice vary widely. Some refugees believe that Syrians will be ready to rebuild ties once the conflict ends, while others are less optimistic. Some believe that justice is necessary for return, while others think it unlikely to occur. The research makes it clear that the restoration of dignity will play an important role in establishing the necessary conditions for refugee return and coexistence.
While return will ultimately depend on a political resolution to the Syrian conflict, several steps can be taken now that are likely to have implications for return and coexistence in the future. These include:

• Integrate the views of refugees into discussions and policies about conditions of return, as participatory processes are more likely to lead to context-specific interventions.
• Support community-level interventions, like the provision of psychosocial support, that can be implemented now and may facilitate return and coexistence in the future.
• Address sexual and gender-based violence, women’s exploitation, and child marriage by empowering women, educating young girls, and raising awareness of such abuses among families.
• Provide educational support to minimize the risk of the next generation being characterized by missed schooling, trauma, and violence.
• Integrate property and land restitution into discussions of displacement settlement processes in the interest of future social cohesion.
• Promote interaction between different groups and communities to reduce and prevent further sectarian and political divisions.
• Support further research on Syrian refugee experiences and views on return and coexistence in countries such as Turkey and Jordan as well as in Europe.

Legal Field Study: A Survey of Court Cases against Syrian Nationals in Lebanon for Criminal Matters

ACCESS TO JUSTICE FOR SYRIAN REFUGEES IN LEBANON

 

Centre International des Sciences de l'Homme (CISH-UNESCO)

Karim El Mufti 

November 2015

 

Rationale

With the outbreak of war in neighbouring Syria, Lebanon is hosting a growing Syrian refugee population (estimated today at 1.1 million). Struggling between its international obligations under humanitarian principles and security and terrorism concerns, the Lebanese government has sent mixed signals as to how to deal with the Syrian refugees (displaced as per the official rhetoric). As a result, the Syrian refugee population in Lebanon is vulnerable and has difficulties accessing basic elements of justice.

International Alert, the Lebanese American University and the International Centre For Human Sciences (CISH) in Byblos has joined efforts under a NWO-WOTRO grant for Science for Global Development on Embedding Justice in Power and Politics (Netherlands) to further study the Access to Justice of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Using quantitative data extracted from a selection of Lebanese Courts’ decisions, this paper aims to identify the professional trend of the Lebanese Judiciary towards Syrian defendants in conflict with the Lebanese law.

Methodology

Between February and June 2015, the author and his team worked on collecting lawsuits details of criminal type, involving Syrian nationals living in Lebanon (either as plaintiff or defendant) from three specific Court jurisdictions in Lebanon: Beirut Registry; Zahle Registry; Tripoli Registry, each in one of its chambers. The data collected form the sample used in this study and offer an important overview of the different elements of the cases such as: nationality of plaintiff/defendant and gender; date of arrest; list of charges; date of first judicial hearing; nature of court’s jurisdiction; name of the sitting judge and status of lawsuit, whether it ended, and if so if the plaintiff was convicted or released. 

The dates of these court cases stretch from June 2011 to April 2015 (based on date of arrest of the defendant). The latest court decision in this survey is dated 30 May 2015.

Out of the three geographically different registries in Beirut, Zahle and Tripoli, a total of 807 lawsuits were identified involving a Syrian national as a defendant, in addition to lawsuits where both plaintiffs and defendants were Syrians.

The study of this large sample of cases is deemed useful to identify a number of items that interest the larger research of the consortium, such as:

-       Nature of most common charges filed against Syrian nationals in Lebanon since the start of the crisis in Syria.

-       Outcome of these lawsuits as to the ability of Syrian nationals to acquire a solid judicial defence.

-       The sentencing policy of the Lebanese judiciary in these cases when it comes to Syrian nationals.

Full study available on this link.

Official response to the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon, the disastrous policy of no-policy

by Dr. Karim El Mufti

University Professor, expert in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law & Social Entrepreneur

According to UNHCR, “over 2 million people have fled Syria since the beginning of the conflict in 2011, making this one of the largest refugee exoduses in recent history with no end yet in sight. The refugee population in the region could reach over 4 million by the end of 2014”. In Lebanon, UNHCR recorded 858.641 refugees by 31st December 2013, and some media reports skyrocket the number through the roof claiming that more than a million refugees are already living in the country. This short paper offers an insight on how the Lebanese authorities reacted to this humanitarian crisis, and points out the (absence of) policy from the relevant decision makers.

The paper was published on Daleel-Madani.org on 10 January 2014, click here to read.

Tumultuous Lebanon, Where the Intelligence War Never Pauses

Dr. Karim El Mufti

University Professor

Political Scientist

It took longer than usual compared with other political assassinations (given the high secrecy linked to security related areas), but the information eventually came out, the head of the Intelligence Branch of the Internal Security Forces (ISF), Brigadier Wissam El Hassan, was targeted and terminated.

1. The political war and Syria

Minutes into the Ashrafieh blast and 14 March local figures were already trying to make political good fortune out of the tragedy, raising the scenario of an alleged targeting of the Kataeb House, or the 14 March General Secretariat office, or even how Syria the terrorist “targeted the heart of a Lebanese Christian area”. The context changed once the announcement broke of the direct plot against the ISF Brigadier, even though the accused party remained the same: Syria had killed Al Hassan in “retaliation of the arrest of Michel Samaha”, the close advisor of Bashar Al Assad ; he was targeted because of the “efforts made by the ISF to stop Syrian infiltrations into Lebanon”.

Blaming directly the Syrian regime for the terrorist blast, self-exiled Saad Hariri was, from day one, trying to use the killing as a high horse to make a comeback onto the Lebanese political landscape after a period of political numbness: “if I were prime minister, my actions would be to stand against Bachar el Assad and say very clearly that anything that will come into Lebanon, if the regime is trying to export its terrorists to Lebanon, we would definitely refuse it”[1].

Other spokespersons from the 14 March coalition carried on with the interpretation that this attack was an export of the Syrian conflict into the heart of the Lebanese capital. As clearly put by Kataeb president and anti-Syrian figure, Amine El Gemayel, to the LBC television : “This regime, which is crumbling, is trying to export its conflict to Lebanon”.

But this explanation falls short when, at the same time, the same anti-Syrian coalition eagerly connected the attack (due to “troubling similarities”) with past attacks on anti-Syrian figures (Gebran Tueni or Antoine Ghanem for instance), at a time when “Syria al Assad” was well up on its feet, way before the civil war there.  

Still, there is no doubt in the extensiveness of the blow the anti-Syrian coalition 14 March has just received with the decapitation of the head of a security service loyal to its agenda. Along with other public administrations, like the Council for Reconstruction and Development and Ogero within the Telecommunications Ministry, this ISF branch represented little of what was left of the opposition’s influence within State institutions, remotely led by Saad Hariri since he was removed from power in January of last year. Given the sensitive and strategic nature of the Information Branch within the ISF, needless to say how enduring the hit came to the political leverage of the 14 March coalition.

2. The evidence war and the STL

Wissam Al Hassan was not only a top security operative who made possible the dismantlement of pro-Israeli cells, or the arrest of former Minister Michel Samaha last August for planning to carry out terrorist attacks on Lebanese soil, he was most importantly in charge of the Lebanese side of the investigation of Rafic Hariri’s assassination. Brigadier Al Hassan was hence among the people the prosecutor at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) could count on in order to build his case. In that, the indictment against the four members of Hezbollah is based, in the prosecutor’s own words, on “circumstantial evidence”[2] related to a series of interconnected telecommunications cells that were operating in preparation to the attack, and that were allegedly set up by the four suspects yet to be arrested.  

With the overturn of the political equilibrium and the formation of the 8 March pro-Syrian government, which is hostile to the STL work, the intelligence unit run by Brigadier Al Hassan had the mission of keeping the cooperation with the STL’s prosecutor alive. It is important to highlight that the ISF Information Branch is the unit that uncovered the telecommunications cells’ matrix (with the support of another police martyr and IT expert, Captain Wissam Eid, assassinated in January 2008), before linking it to Hezbollah members, and then possibly leaking the information to Der Spiegel who suggested this eventuality in May 2009, two years before the indictment was issued. Since that time, a crucial target shift has taken place, passing from the suspicion of an official Syrian involvement to a Lebanese (Hezbollah) involvement in the assassination of Rafic Hariri.

As such, anti-Hezbollah formations in Lebanon had high hopes in the work of the ISF intelligence branch as it was fuelling, genuinely or not, the accusation party, despite the loss of control over the government. Whether these pieces of evidence were authentic or not was never really the primary concern of the 14 March coalition. Some opposition figures, like Samir Geagea, chose to entirely endorse the views of the prosecutor as to the involvement of Hezbollah suspects[3], even before the pre-trial Judge had set a trial date, whereas Hezbollah officials regularly rejected the telecommunications related evidence considering it fabricated. 

This evidence war, that will contribute to determine the fate and outcome of the coming trial, has put Brigadier Wissam El Hassan at the centre of a vast intelligence (national, regional and international) confrontation, as he fell victim of irreconcilable conflicting interests where the battles behind the scenes never pause. 

3. The 14 March window of opportunity to regain political ground

For the opposition group, the killing of Al Hassan has hence taken away a strong Lebanese ally in the investigation team that would have been keen on beefing up the accusation party against the four Hezbollah suspects, especially with the trial date (in abstentia) approaching and fixed to 25 March 2013. In the minds of 14 March figures, as the trial would advance against Hezbollah members, the popularity of the party of God would be shaken, and this during election year.

Until then, fearing another May 2008 violent showdown, 14 March leaders have decided to throw their internal wrath against Nagib Mikati. The prime minister now faces a tough spot as the attack happened on his watch while he is representing a pro-Syrian government, despite ingenious manoeuvring to escape impossible contradictions during his mandate through decisions that digressed from core 8 March interests. We can mention for instance the funding of the Lebanese share of the STL, the spearheading of aid towards the Syrian displaced usually considered as supporting the Free Syrian Army, or the freezing of the wage increase, an important component of 8 March agenda, as a gesture to the private sector. At the end of the line, Prime Minister Mikati offered his resignation that has been, curious constitutional outcome, “suspended”, as he is today threatened by experiencing the same political fate as Omar Karame whose political carrier crashed back in April 2005 in close circumstances.

 

Accumulating political and street pressure against the present prime minister is a convenient way for 14 March to be blaming a Sunni official for the death of another Sunni official, hence hitting on Hezbollah’s hold over the government in an indirect fashion without being accused of fuelling sectarianism, and eventually try and bring it down. This short-term battle represents, for opposition figures, a small window of opportunity to regain some political capital a few months before the 2013 elections, but at the cost of maintaining Lebanon in a state of tumult.

Beirut, 21 October 2012

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[1] Saad Hariri interview to CNN, reported by The Daily Star, 20 October 2012, available at http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2012/Oct-20/192109-hariri-tells-cnn-hasan-killed-over-samaha-case.ashx#ixzz29owAYqFW 

[2] §3, p.3 of the indictment

[3] Press conference of Samir Geagea in Meerab on 27 August 2011, cf. Geagea : L’acte d’accusation est basé sur suffisamment de preuves, L’Orient-Le Jour, 28 August 2011.

Interview in Le Soir-Echos (Rabat) on Democratic Transitions and Arab Spring

Les Révolutions Arabes vues par El Mufti

Ecrit par Céline Girard le 2 mars 2012

Dr. Karim el Mufti (en médaillon): «tout soulèvement ou renversement à l’encontre d’une autocratie ne s’oriente pas forcément vers une transition démocratique»

Karim El Mufti a orienté ses recherches vers la reconstruction d’État (state-building), notamment dans les sociétés plurielles et multicommunautaires, travaillant sur les contextes libanais et ex-yougoslave. Cet entretien a été réalisé en marge de sa conférence, jeudi à Rabat, à l’invitation de l’École de gouvernance et d’économie (EGE) et son centre de recherche sur l’Afrique et la Méditerranée (CERAM).


L’immolation du tunisien Mohammed Bouazizi le 17 décembre 2010 n’est pas sans rappeler le geste du tchèque Jan Palach en 1969. Y a-t-il lieu de faire un parallèle entre ces deux actes ?
Effectivement, ces actes désespérés se multiplient dans un climat de dictature répressive. Ils furent d’ailleurs observés à de nombreuses reprises dans d’autres régions tunisiennes, en Égypte ainsi qu’en Libye, mais c’est l’acte de Mohammad Bouazizi qui forgea cette dimension symbolique associée à l’affrontement entre la rue et la dictature de manière générale. Par ailleurs, l’immolation, comme forme de protestation ultime et extrême, se retrouve dans d’autres contextes tout aussi répressifs sans que cela n’ait pu amorcer un soulèvement général apportant un coup fatal au régime en place, comme lors du geste de Jan Palach en Tchécoslovaquie. Plus proche de notre époque, je pense également au Tibet.

Au-delà de ce geste déclencheur, quels éléments permettent de construire une analyse comparative entre le printemps arabe et les transitions démocratiques en Europe ?
Tout d’abord, l’approche comparative porte en elle des limitations d’ordre empirique. Tout soulèvement ou renversement à l’encontre d’une autocratie ne s’oriente pas forcément vers une transition démocratique: le Chili de Pinochet, l’Iran de Khomeyni, la Libye de Khadafi ou la Syrie des Assad ont ainsi défié l’approche déterministe qui implique un sens unique à l’Histoire des sociétés en direction de la démocratie et l’économie de marché.
En revanche, la multiplication des vagues de démocratisation dans des contextes divers, en Europe du sud, en Amérique Latine, en Europe de l’Est et dans les Balkans, favorise une réflexion de type comparatif sur les facteurs ayant initié un changement de régime, voire une révolution, et la manière dont les transitions furent gérées, selon quels rapports de force, et pour construire quels types de régimes.

Quels enseignements nous apporte cette mise en perspective ?
Il est intéressant de noter une constante dans les périodes de transition démocratique, à savoir celle d’une recherche d’une nouvelle légitimité politique qui se veut moderne, donc issue d’un processus proprement institutionnel : échéances électorales, réformes constitutionnelles et politiques, respect des droits de l’homme, renforcement de l’indépendance du judiciaire, soumission de l’armée au pouvoir civil, etc.
Dans les trois pays du printemps arabe ayant amorcé leur transition démocratique, celle-ci s’est à chaque fois orientée vers un choix de consolidation institutionnelle vue comme marque absolue de modernité politique. Ainsi l’Égypte a amendé sa constitution et procédé à des élections, la Tunisie a mis en place une Assemblée constituante élue afin de diriger un nettoyage constitutionnel en profondeur et la Libye, malgré un contexte post-révolutionnaire chaotique, tente tant bien que mal de jalonner un chemin pouvant garantir la tenue d’élections d’ici le mois de juin.
Un autre indicateur est à lire dans la place laissée aux acteurs du régime déchu. Il n’est pas rare que les transitions démocratiques se fassent tout en associant des piliers de l’ancien régime, comme lors du coup d’État au Portugal en 1974 ou l’Espagne post-franquiste. La question se pose d’autant plus sachant que les transitions arabes qui viennent de porter de nouveaux acteurs politiques sur le devant de la scène (les formations islamistes) luttent en ce moment avec la question de la coopération avec les protagonistes influents de l’époque de la dictature, tel l’armée par exemple.

Un rapport à la mi-février par le Centre international de recherche et d’étude sur le terrorisme et d’aide aux victimes du terrorisme (CIRET-AVT) qualifie la situation en Syrie de « libanisation fabriquée ». Qu’en pensez-vous ? Y a-t-il lieu de faire un rapprochement ?
La situation en Syrie aujourd’hui et l’utilisation de plus en plus marquée de la grille de lecture confessionnelle présente effectivement des rapprochements faciles avec le concept de libanisation qui sous-entend une fragmentation du tissu social selon des lignes de clivage confessionnelles. Néanmoins, le pluralisme religieux syrien n’a pas encore pris une tournure expressément politique, à la manière dont s’est construite la pratique politico-communautaire proprement libanaise. Les enjeux du soulèvement de la rue syrienne contre le régime quadragénaire de la dynastie Assad ne sont pas directement liés à la mainmise alaouite du clan Assad sur le pays. La doctrine baasiste et socialiste de la Syrie a pu instaurer un système d’État providence, qui a bénéficié à l’ensemble des couches de la population sans distinction de communauté ou de religion. Par contre, les excès et la corruption d’une classe d’oligarque qui a pu se former à l’ombre de la dynastie Assad, conjuguée à la paupérisation de plus en plus grandissante de la jeunesse syrienne du fait de l’incapacité du régime à moderniser son système économique, a contribué à nourrir la vague de contestation à l’encontre de la nature répressive du régime. ◆

http://www.lesoir-echos.com/les-revolutions-arabes-vues-par-el-mufti/monde/46746/