Lebanon to lobby for support at Berlin summit

BEIRUT: Prime Minister Tammam Salam, Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil and Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas will travel this week to Berlin, where they will lobby the international community to increase its support for Lebanon during a conference on the Syrian refugee crisis.

Tuesday’s conference in the German capital which will gather foreign ministers and international organizations will be co-hosted by German ministers and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres.

Organizers hope governments will “commit to medium-term humanitarian solutions in support of the refugees and local [host] communities who are increasingly feeling the impact on structures and services,” according to the German Foreign Office.

The International Support Group for Lebanon will meet Tuesday morning to discuss the particular challenges the country faces as it struggles to cope with more than 1.1 million Syrian refugees within its borders.

At an International Support Group meeting in New York last month, Salam stressed that the Syrian refugee crisis was having a severe economic impact on Lebanon. He is expected to repeat a call for increased international financial support in Berlin.

Aside from fundraising efforts, the Lebanese delegates will seek political backing for the government’s new decision to stem the flow of Syrian refugees into Lebanon.

“We are asking for additional support for Lebanon. We’re not only talking about [financial] pledges, we’re talking about political support ... particularly [regarding] the refugee situation,” said Hala al-Helou, an adviser to Derbas.

Last week, the government decided Lebanon could accept no more refugees, and would only welcome displaced Syrians with urgent humanitarian needs.

Helou said that at the forthcoming conference Lebanese ministers would insist on the country’s sovereignty and, working closely with Jordanian counterparts, would ask that other countries take a more proactive role in sharing the burden of the refugee crisis. “They need to start looking into serious solutions for the situation aside from giving us advice,” Helou added.

Particularly, Lebanon and Jordan will demand that European countries accept more displaced Syrians, and that the international community seriously discuss the prospect of refugee repatriation, Helou told The Daily Star.

The Lebanese government has long maintained that there are safe areas within Syria where refugees could be responsibly resettled. “This is one of our priorities,” she stressed.

According to Helou, the international community is “negotiating” whether the safe return of Syrians is currently feasible.

Both Helou and Derbas denied reports of an international plot to pressure Lebanon into signing the Geneva Convention.

Helou said, however, that some language in the final declaration of the conference was “not acceptable” to the Lebanese authorities. Lebanon is not a signatory to the 1951 Geneva Convention, which affords certain legal rights to those fleeing conflict.

Initially, a draft of the conference’s closing statement included references to the Geneva Convention, Helou said. Both Lebanon and Jordan objected to the wording, and to the fact that the declaration was referred to as a legally binding compact. The statement has since been revised.

“There was no actual coercion,” Helou said. “But at the same time we did not approve of it.”

Still, Derbas insisted that Lebanon adheres to international human rights principles. “We are a member of the U.N. and we abide by human rights declarations,” Derbas told The Daily Star. “But we must always look out for the rights of Lebanese.”