Back to Contents 1. History of Palestinians’ exile to Lebanon resulting in various legal statuses for Palestinians 1.1. “Which legal statuses do Palestinians residing in Lebanon have?” UNRWA reports that it is struggling to meet targets for identifying Palestinians with ‘specific protection issues’: “In 2021, the Agency’s Protection and Neutrality Team in Lebanon continued to identify people with specific protection issues, which were mainly related to difficulties in accessing services. Underachievement against the target reflected: (i) restricted in-person contact due to COVID-19 operating conditions; and (ii) staff only recording cases that required significant follow up, with the result that less complex cases often went unrecorded. The team is reviewing protocols for reporting against this indicator in 2022.” (Source: UNRWA, “Annual Operational Report 2021” 27 October 2022, p. 123) A 2022 OCHA report gives a summary of the four different groups of Palestinian refugees residing in Lebanon: “[…]1. Palestine Refugees in Lebanon (PRL) who are descended from those who lived in Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict; 2. Those not registered with UNRWA who were displaced as a result of the 1967 and subsequent hostilities, and who are registered with the Lebanese Government (referred to as “Not-Registered” or NR by UNRWA) (numbers unknown); 3. Palestinian refugees who lack identity documents and are neither registered with UNRWA nor with the Lebanese authorities (referred to as “Non-IDs”), likely to be an estimated 5000; and 4. Palestinian refugees from Syria (PRS), who have arrived in Lebanon since 2013 and who may or may not have regular status in Lebanon.” (Source: OCHA,“Increasing Humanitarian Needs in Lebanon, April 2022”, 14 April 2022, footnote 132, p. 26) In a peer-reviewed article about Palestinians’ access to the labour market in Lebanon published in 2022, academics Samih Eloubeidi and Prof. Tina Kempin gave an estimate of the number of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon: “Close to half a million Palestinian refugees are registered in Lebanon, with about 180,000–260,000 estimated as permanent residents who have lived in the country since their displacement from Palestine in 1948.24 The rest of Palestinian refugees are from elsewhere, including about 42,000 additional Palestinian refugees from Syria that have arrived in Lebanon since 2011.” (Source: Samih Eloubeidi & Tina Kempin/ The International Journal of Human Rights: “Restricting access to employment as a human rights violation: a case study of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon“, 11 April 2022, p. 3) In an academic chapter on family dispersion among Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Syria published in 2021, geographer Dr. Kamel Doraï wrote that today “Lebanon hosts the majority of Palestinian refugees from Syria who are fleeing war in Syria.” and that: “In 2011, when the Syrian crisis began, many families gradually left Syria to seek asylum in neighboring countries. Palestinian refugees in Syria were gradually been caught up in the conflict and some of them were forced into exile. While most neighboring countries closed their borders very rapidly to this group of refugees, Lebanon adopted a more flexible approach (Doraï & Al Husseini, 2013). More than 50,000 Syrian Palestinians have found asylum in Lebanon. The geography of this exile is singular. “Lebanon is one of the countries in the region where the legal status of Palestinians is most precarious. More than half of the Palestinians in Lebanon still live in one of 12 refugee camps, where socio-economic conditions are very difficult. This polarization of Palestinian migration from Syria to these areas may, however, be explained by the historical ties between Palestinian refugees in both countries (Doraï, 2015). Forced migration related to the current conflict in Syria is based on forms of mobility developed since the 1948 exodus (Nakba in Arabic).” 24 UNRWA, ‘Where We Work: Lebanon’ 1. History of Palestinians's exile to Lebanon resulting in various legal statuses for Palestinians 17