The European Union is 'bankrolling' Lebanese institutions without monitoring their compliance with fundamental rights, Human Rights Watch says.
ADVERTISEMENTSyrian refugees attempting to reach Cyprus from Lebanon are being pulled back by EU-funded Lebanese authorities and forcibly expelled to their homeland despite fleeing war and persecution, a new report released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch claims.
The Cypriot coastguard is enabling these forced removals by pushing refugees back to Lebanon, while the EU is injecting money into the Lebanese armed forces responsible for repeated human rights abuses, the report also says.
"Despite European donors’ lip service to human rights obligations, European funding to Lebanese security agencies for border management has continued while those same agencies have engaged in abusive pullbacks and summary expulsions of Syrian refugees," the report notes.
The findings were gathered by the New York-based NGO based on photo and video evidence, aircraft and boat tracking data as well as the testimonials of sixteen Syrian refugees and asylum seekers who had attempted to leave Lebanon, where they faced increasingly hostile conditions.
Of the sixteen refugees, fifteen had suffered human rights abuses at the hands of either Lebanese or Cypriot authorities, including detention, beatings, body restraints, and verbal insults.
Eleven of them had been forcibly returned to Syria by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), including four who had earlier been returned from Cyprus to Lebanon.
"Not only is this a flagrant violation of the right to seek international protection - which is their right, and they were summarily denied that by both the Cypriot and Lebanese authorities - they were also beaten, shoved, handcuffed, arbitrarily detained and subjected to inhuman treatment," Nadia Hardman, a researcher for Human Rights Watch's Refugee and Migrant Rights Division, told Euronews.
"All before what is the most devastating part of the story, when they were sometimes forced to return to Syria, where we have documented (...) the way in which refugee returnees are arbitrarily detained, disappeared and sometimes killed," she added.
Hardman says that the Cypriot and Lebanese authorities' actions are a clear breach of the legal principle of 'non-refoulement', which forbids a state from deporting any person to a country where they could face cruel or degrading treatment.
Conditions facing Syrian refugees in Lebanon - which hosts the world's largest number of refugees per capita, including 1.5 million Syrian refugees - have significantly declined in recent years as anti-refugee hostility grows.
A steep uptick in the number of Syrian refugees crossing irregularly to Cyprus, an EU member state, was detected in April amid increasing regional instability, prompting the Cypriot authorities to suspend the processing of asylum applications.
The EU responded in May with a €1-billion financial package to Lebanon through 2026, including money to equip and train the Lebanese armed forces to better manage the border.
Half of the package (€500 million) was adopted in August, of which €368 million was targeted at supporting vulnerable people in Lebanon, including Syrian refugees. The remaining €132 million was earmarked to implement a range of economic and security reforms, including to step up "support to the security sector and border management," according to the Commission.
In a statement shared with Euronews in response to Human Rights Watch's findings, the European Commission said: "The EU pays close attention to the human rights protection situation in Lebanon, including concerning refugees from Syria."
"The EU expects Lebanon, like any partner, to fulfil its international obligations, including as regards the respect for the principle of non-refoulment and for the human rights of refugees," the statement adds.
ADVERTISEMENT"The European Commission monitors EU-funded programmes through several means, including regular reports from implementing partners, on the spot verification missions, results oriented monitoring exercises and external evaluations," it continues. "All EU contracts have human rights clauses that allow the Commission to adjust implementation as necessary."
EU 'bankrolling' institutions without 'meaningful checks'
But Human Rights Watch says the bloc is channelling money to Lebanese state authorities and institutions without the necessary checks and balances to ensure they comply with fundamental rights.
"There is no concomitant conditionality that these institutions, these agencies comply with fundamental human rights principles," Hardman told Euronews.
"In fact, what we've seen with the EU-Lebanon deal, is almost a reward. Here is another pledge to provide outrageous sums of money without any kind of conditionality attached to them," she said, adding that her organisation is not against funding the Lebanese authorities, but that clear conditions and monitoring mechanisms need to be introduced to ensure the EU is not complicit in these abuses.
ADVERTISEMENTThe NGO also calls into question the EU executive's capacity to ascertain whether the partners it contracts to provide border management support to Lebanese authorities - such as the Vienna-based International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) - comply with fundamental rights, given that they are not subject to the EU's human rights frameworks.
The European Commission told Human Rights Watch in a letter dated August 20 that EU-funded interventions carried out by ICMPD are "closely followed by the European Commission, including via the EU Delegation in Beirut."
"Before each payment [to ICMPD], the EU carries out a verification of the financial and operational progress on the basis of narrative and financial reports submitted by the implementing partner," the letter adds, according to Human Rights Watch.
The NGO adds that in internal documents it has gained access to, the EU executive acknowledges that “security actors benefiting from EU projects may act against international Human Rights standards.”
ADVERTISEMENTCyprus eyes Mediterranean Commissioner role
Human Rights Watch's revelations come as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen interviews candidates to form part of her next 'college' of Commissioners responsible for steering the work of the powerful EU executive for the next five years.
Cyprus' candidate, Costas Kadis, told Cypriot media on Monday that the new role of European Commissioner for the Mediterranean is "of interest" to his government.
That role would involve overseeing the bloc's migration management agreements with countries in its southern neighbourhood including the existing deals struck with Egypt, Lebanon, Mauritania and Tunisia to curb migrant flows.
Some of these deals have been heavily criticised by human rights defenders for ignoring the countries' documented violations.
ADVERTISEMENTIn her political priorities for the upcoming mandate, von der Leyen vows to continue to develop "strategic relations" on migration and security with non-EU countries, adding that a "new Pact for the Mediterranean" will aim to deepen these partnerships.
Human Rights Watch questions the appropriability of allocating the portfolio to Cyprus.
"Cyprus is engaging in illegal, expulsions. They are bound by the EU's very powerful human rights framework and norms, which are being ignored," Hardman said.
"Until there is an investigation and accountability for what are essentially flagrant violations of international law, I don't think that they should be in charge of a portfolio where they will be in charge of important issues such as migration."
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