Berri: Lebanon Rejects All Forms of Settlement

After calls voiced by US President Donald Trump for seeking an approach for refugees settlement in their home region, Lebanon's parliament rejected on Wednesday the approach assuring that “there will be no settlement for refugees in Lebanon.”

“In the name of lawmakers, and according to Lebanon's constitution, Lebanon's land is one for all the Lebanese and 'there shall be ... no settlement of non-Lebanese in Lebanon'” Speaker Nabih Berri said after a parliament meeting in Nejmeh Square.

The lawmakers stressed that “permanent settlement violates the Constitution,” they said: “In accordance with the Constitution, the land of Lebanon is one for all Lebanese. There will be no classification of people or land and there will be no settlement of non-Lebanese.”

At the UN General Assembly in New York, Trump had called on countries hosting refugees to “seek an approach to refugee resettlement,” to “enable their eventual return to their home countries to be part of the rebuilding process.”

Lebanon hosts more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees, who amount to more than a quarter of the country's population not to mention undocumented individuals, many of whom live in informal tented settlements.

The Syria 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.