The European Union announced on Thursday an aid package for Lebanon of 1 billion euros — about $1.06 billion — much of which will go to strengthening border control to halt the flow of asylum seekers and migrants from the small, crisis-wracked country across the Mediterranean Sea to Cyprus and Italy. It comes against a backdrop of increasing hostility toward Syrian refugees in Lebanon and a major surge in irregular migration of Syrian refugees from Lebanon to Cyprus.
The United Nations announced Saturday that it will suspend a plan to begin making aid payments to Syrian refugees in crisis-wracked Lebanon in dollars, after pushback from Lebanese officials. Lebanon has been in the throes of a severe financial crisis since 2019, with triple-digit inflation and the domestic currency having lost more than 98% of its market value. Since the collapse of Lebanon’s currency, U.N. agencies had been paying assistance to refugees in Lebanese pounds.