In light of efforts to return displaced Syrians to their homeland, Lebanon's foreign ministry has initiated measures for the registration of refugees' births and civil documentation at the Syrian embassy in Beirut, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Saturday.
For that purpose, the “foreign ministry has referred to the interior ministry a memo from the Syrian Embassy expressing the wish that the competent Lebanese authorities begin work on the personal status registration of refugees, especially marriages and births."
The registration would be "mainly for Syrian persons who do not hold valid legal residence, in order to allow access to Syrian identity documents and thus facilitate their return to their homeland,” said the daily.
“The embassy also proposes the cancellation of fines imposed for the unlawful residency of Syrians who wish to leave Lebanon permanently,” it added.
- Norwegian women happy to date Syrians unlike Lebanese counterparts
- Syrian Refugees Scapegoats for Lebanese Government’s Failings
A Lebanese minister, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the daily: “The number of Syrian births in Lebanon are almost countless. We have been able to register around 260,000 births since 2011.”
Al-Joumhouria added that several letters have been exchanged in that regard since the beginning of October between the foreign ministry, interior ministry and the Syrian embassy.
The Norwegian Refugee Council said in a report that around 92 percent of refugees in Lebanon are unable to complete all the legal and administrative steps to register the birth of their children.
NRC added that “thousands of children in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq lack basic identity and civil documents, impacting their ability to claim a range of rights and protections and endangering their access to education and other services if they choose to return to Syria.”
Lebanon hosts more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees, who amount to more than a quarter of the country's population. This number does not include undocumented individuals, many of whom live in informal tented settlements.
The Syrian refugee influx into Lebanon has strained the country's infrastructure, and has also sparked accusations that refugee camps are harboring militants from the war.
The World Bank says the Syrian crisis has pushed an estimated 200,000 Lebanese into poverty, adding to the nation's one million poor.
This article has been edited by Al Bawaba from its original version
