LEBANON: The number of Syrian refugees who have fled to Lebanon officially topples one million, highlighting the growing humanitarian crisis Syria's civil war is causing and the huge burden it is placing on its neighbours

Record ID: 274546

  • Title: LEBANON: The number of Syrian refugees who have fled to Lebanon officially topples one million, highlighting the growing humanitarian crisis Syria's civil war is causing and the huge burden it is placing on its neighbours
  • Date: 3rd April 2014
  • Summary: TRIPOLI, LEBANON (APRIL 3, 2014) (REUTERS) UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES (UNHCR) REGISTRATION CENTRE BANNER READING 'UNHCR' VARIOUS OF SYRIAN REFUGEES WAITING IN QUEUE FOR REGISTRATION VARIOUS OF UNHCR REGISTRATION DESK MILLIONTH SYRIAN REFUGEE, YEHYA CHAKER CHARKIEH, WITH UNHCR STAFF (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) MILLIONTH SYRIAN REFUGEE IN LEBANON, YEHYA CHAKER C
  • Embargoed: 18th April 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Lebanon
  • Country: Lebanon
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA2PS03P9R80DB1XKBHYX3X4U74
  • Story Text: The number of Syrian refugees who have fled to Lebanon officially topped 1 million on Thursday (April 3), highlighting the growing humanitarian catastrophe caused by Syria's civil war and the huge burden placed on its poorly prepared neighbours.
    The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR marked what it called a devastating milestone by formally registering an 18-year-old student from the city of Homs as the millionth refugee at a ceremony in Lebanon's Mediterranean city of Tripoli.
    But even for Yehya Chaker Charkieh, the one millionth Syrian in Lebanon, the number is too large to fathom.

    "The number one million is too big for refugees in Lebanon. Refugees inside Syria are moving from one area to another, and when fleeing to Lebanon, they are finding it very hard here. One million is too big for Lebanon," Charkieh told Reuters.
    After three years of conflict sparked by protests against President Bashar al-Assad's autocratic rule, Syria's war has caused one of the greatest upheavals seen in the Middle East - and one which shows no sign of abating.
    With a population of just four million, Lebanon now has the highest per capita concentration of refugees worldwide, an influx which the government has described as an existential threat in a country scarred by its own volatile history.
    School-aged refugees eclipse the number of Lebanese children in the country's state schools, the UN says, and 2,500 new refugees are registered every day.

    "The extent of the human tragedy is not just the recitation of numbers," UNHCR representative Ninette Kelley told reporters in Tripoli.

    "Each one of these numbers represents a human life who ... they've lost their homes, they've lost their family members, they've lost their sense of future."
    Syrians have also fled to Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt, and the official total of 2.6 million refugees - which understates the scale of the exodus - means Syrians will soon overtake Afghans as the world's biggest refugee population.
    Many millions more have been displaced inside Syria, and the pace has only accelerated in the last 12 months.
    In April 2013, two years after the Syrian crisis erupted, there were 356,000 refugees in Lebanon. That number has nearly tripled in the last 12 months.
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