Lebanese Party leader Samir Geagea said on Friday that he sent a message to the UN Secretary-General warning of legal measures to close the UNHCR\u2019s regional office in Lebanon because of the latter\u2019s \u201cnon-cooperation\u201d on the issue of Syrian refugees.<\/p>\n
Geagea said he handed the UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, a letter to UN chief Antonio Guterres.
\n\u201cLebanon is suffering from massive crises and problems, most of which is the random and chaotic presence of illegal Syrian refugees\u201d, said Geagea in a statement on Facebook.
\nCriticizing the UNHCR\u2019s handling of the years-long presence of refugees, he said: \u201cwhat makes things worse is the UNHCR\u2019s handling of the issue and how it embarks on incorporating the Syrians in the Lebanese fabric instead of finding a third country to naturalize them, or even return them back to their homeland\u201d.
\nGeagea accused the UNHCR of withholding information about documented Syrians and abstaining from forwarding them to official authorities in Lebanon\u201d.
\nHe accused the agency of \u201cinfringing on Lebanon\u2019s sovereignty\u201d by providing Syrian refugees with residency permits and \u201crefugee\u201d IDs.
\nIn his message, Geagea asked Guterres to make the UNHCR stop these practices and to share its data, related to illegal Syrians, with the authorities in Lebanon on a regular basis.
\nHe said the UNHCR must respect the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between the Lebanese General Security and the UNHCR in 2003, stipulating that Lebanon is not a country of asylum, but merely a country of transit.
\nThe LF chief concluded by saying that legal measures would be taken if the agency does not abide. UNHCR offices in Beirut could be closed down and its activities suspended, he noted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lebanese Party leader Samir Geagea said on Friday that he sent a message to the UN Secretary-General warning of legal measures to close the UNHCR\u2019s regional office in Lebanon because of the latter\u2019s \u201cnon-cooperation\u201d on the issue of Syrian refugees. Geagea said he handed the UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, a letter to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25074"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25076,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25074\/revisions\/25076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}