Thousands of Syrian Refugees Face Eviction From Lebanese Camps
Some 3,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley have vacated their makeshift homes after the Lebanese armed forces issued eviction notices last month, Human Rights Watch (HRW) told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The Lebanese army announced that refugees living in informal settlements around the Riyaq military airport in the Bekaa Valley would have to relocate, while citing “security” as a reason.
Up to 10,000 Syrian refugees could be forcibly evicted from camps, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR told Reuters.
“About 3,000 people have left their homes of their own accord after receiving oral eviction notices. The orders came out starting in late March,” HRW’s Lebanon researcher Bassam Khawaja told AFP.
The government has not yet clarified where these people will go, according to Mike Bruce, a spokesman for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).
Last month Prime Minister Saad Hariri spoke of “huge tensions” between Lebanese and Syrians in many communities hosting refugees, warning that they could collapse into “civil unrest,” local news outlets reported.
Amid Growing Crackdowns in the Balkans, Serbia Detains Migrants
Serbian police arrested 20 migrants in the northern town of Sid and sent an additional 200 people to a detention center in the south of the country, Reuters reported.
Twenty migrants were detained for questioning after Sid’s mayor Predrag Vukovic complained that migrants “stole, fought among each other and attacked the locals,” according to the Associated Press.
Another 200 migrants, mostly men from Afghanistan and Pakistan, were put in three buses and sent to a detention center in Presevo, near the southern border with Macedonia.
Amid border closures along the western Balkan route, migrants are increasingly entering Serbia due to pushbacks. Some are hoping to reach western Europe by using clandestine routes through northern Croatia, according to the reports.
About 6,500-8,000 migrants are currently in Serbia, according to the Asylum Protection Center in Serbia.
‘Mass Deaths’ Due to Starvation Loom in Africa and Yemen
Millions of people in the Horn of Arica, Nigeria and Yemen are at risk of starvation because of drought and conflict, the UNHCR once again warned on Tuesday.
UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards said that this “avoidable humanitarian crisis,” could be worse than the 2011 drought in the Horn of Africa that claimed 260,000 lives as a result of famine.
According to UNHCR estimates, 20 million people, including 4.2 million refugees, live in areas hit hard by drought. More people are at risk of displacement as a result of repeated failed harvests, conflict and severe malnutrition, the agency reported.
The UNHCR added that it currently faces major funding shortages in places such as South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen.
Referring to previous such disasters, Edwards said: “A repeat must be avoided at all costs.”
Recommended Reads
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- Doctors without borders: South Syria: A Family Returns to a Village Battered by War
- PBS Newshour: How War and Years of Lost Education Have Devastated Syrian Children — and What Can Be Done to Help
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