Human Rights Watch publicou esta semana un informe sobre a situación dos miles de persoas que escaparon da ocupación “aliada” do Iraq e foron dar ó Líbano, onde as autoridades non os recoñecen como refuxiados e trátanos como inmigrantes ilegais.
O informe leva por título “Rot Here or Die There: Bleak Choices for Iraqi Refugees in Lebanon”. Copio e pego un extracto da introducción:
As of the last quarter of 2007, the Iraqi displacement crisis shows no signs of abating. Faced with insecurity at unprecedented levels, tens of thousands of Iraqis continue to leave their homes each month. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that more than 2 million people are now displaced inside Iraq, while another 2.2 million Iraqi nationals have sought safety in countries in the region. The vast majority of those Iraqis who have fled abroad have gone to Syria, which hosts an estimated 1.4 million Iraqi refugees, and to Jordan, which is estimated to host up to 750,000 Iraqi refugees.
Compared to Syria and Jordan, Lebanon hosts a relatively small number of Iraqi refugees, estimated at around 50,000. But Lebanon, with a population of only four million people, already shoulders a significant burden by hosting 250,000 to 300,000 Palestinian refugees. Political instability and crisis also make many Lebanese wary of hosting another refugee population whose prospects of returning to their home country in the short term are remote. The situation is further complicated because many Lebanese perceive that the sectarian tensions that plague Iraqi society might feed into, and amplify, the sectarian tensions that are ever present in Lebanon itself.
Iraqi refugees in Lebanon currently enjoy only very limited protection. Since January 2007, UNHCR grants refugee status on a prima facie basis to all Iraqi nationals from central and southern Iraq who have sought asylum in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, and Lebanon. However, Lebanon, like some of its neighbors, does not give legal effect to UNHCR’s recognition of Iraqi refugees. Lebanon is not a party to the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention) or to the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. It has no domestic refugee law. Instead, people who enter Lebanon illegally for the purpose of seeking refuge from persecution, or who enter legally but then overstay their visas for the same purpose, are treated as illegal immigrants and are subject to arrest, imprisonment, fines, and deportation. [...]
