BEIRUT: The UN refugee agency’s representative in Lebanon said Thursday he hopes that at least 200,000 Syrian refugees return from Lebanon by the end of the year under a new government-backed return plan.
Before former President Bashar Assad was ousted in a lightning insurgent offensive in December, only about 1 percent of the Syrian refugees in Lebanon said they were planning to return, UNHCR’s outgoing Lebanon Representative Ivo Freijsen said.
“That has now changed ... 24 percent of the Syrian refugee community in Lebanon is now thinking or planning about going back during the next 12 months. So that’s a very positive shift,” Freijsen told The Associated Press in an interview.
Syria’s uprising-turned-conflict displaced half of the country’s prewar population of 23 million over the last 14 years. Lebanon hosted an estimated 1.5 million refugees, making up roughly a quarter of Lebanon’s six million people at one point. Officials estimate that at least 1 million refugees are still in the country today.
Scaling up a new return plan
