Migration News
Middle-East: Hundreds of Syrians Are Turned Back at Beirut Airport
As a domino effect of border closures in Europe, Turkey, pressured by the European Union, is now applying visas to Syrian nationals, whom everyone knows are genuine refugees fleeing a bloody civil war and to whom Turkey will in effect never deliver visas. The consequences are immediate. Lebanon forcibly returns the refugees to Syria, in violation of the non-refoulement principle. This consequence was foreseeable and Turkey was fully aware or this: it too violated the non-refoulement principle “par ricochet”. Although neither country has any obligation under the 1951 Refugee Convention (Turkey has a geographical limitation and Lebanon hasn’t ratified it at all), the principle is now considered jus cogens.