The U.N. refugee agency (UNHRC) counted 997,905 Syrian refugees as of November 2017, marking the first time the number of refugees dropped to below one million since 2014. Back then, Lebanon became the country with the highest per-capita concentration of refugees worldwide, struggling to keep pace with a crisis that shows no signs of slowing, and we’re struggling up until this hour.
Unfortunately, this meager drop below 1 million doesn’t really mean anything because we’re only talking about registered refugees noting that registration was suspended a couple of years ago as per Government of Lebanon’s instructions. This being said, the numbers are probably much higher but we’re not keeping track of who’s going in and out.
In fact, if you we look throughout the past 6 years, barely 50,000 Syrians left Lebanon as part of the United Nations’ resettlement program and recently, few thousands also returned to Syria. The situation in Syria is not getting any better, and the refugee crisis will only get worse in Lebanon as long as the authorities are exploiting it politically and not taking any serious plans of action to organize this mess.