The Administration and Justice Parliamentary Committee devoted its meeting on Tuesday to the issue of the Syrian presence in Lebanon and decided to introduce a bill aimed at preserving Lebanese sovereignty.
During the meeting, the president of the commission, Georges Adwan, stressed that all the members, who represent all political blocs, unanimously agreed on the “danger” that the Syrian presence represents for Lebanon. The committee insisted on the need to resolve this issue urgently, emphasizing two paths to follow in this regard.
First, the Ministries of the Interior, Defense, and Justice must mobilize once a plan is established by the government. One of the measures suggested to be taken is to close the borders to the displaced Syrians who must return to their country, with the exception of those who have residence permits due to their work.
“The displaced people who arrived at the start of the war in Syria were fleeing their country for security reasons, while today Syrian migration is of an economic nature,” Adwan stated.
Adwan called on the government to ask the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and organizations that provide funding to displaced Syrians to deliver this aid to them in Syria and not in Lebanon.
“We consider that only the memorandum of understanding signed in 2003 with the UNHCR, which stipulates that Lebanon is a country of passage and not a country of asylum for refugees, governs this situation,” Adwan explained.
The second path is the one taken by the Committee on Administration and Justice, which aims to develop a bill “aimed at resolving this issue and preserving the sovereignty of Lebanon, which the UNHCR does not respect.”
