Refugees in Lebanon and their influence on the political stability of the state

Abstract

In October 2019, civil unrest in Lebanon organized in the form of protests against the political establishment. The continuing, or even deepening, mass social unrest and the inability or unwillingness of the political authorities to provide an adequate response to the socio-political and economic crisis, contributed to the positioning of Lebanon among the countries coined by the term of political instability. In the Global Conflict Tracker conflict database – the Center for Preventive Action’s (CPA) Global Conflict Tracker, Lebanon is categorized as a conflict with an unchanging status. Since the explosion in Beirut in August 2020, proposals for a further specification of the Lebanese scene began to appear – suggesting a move from an unstable state to a failed state, further implying a deteriorating condition.

In the context of Lebanon’s current critical social, economic and political situation, and the long history of internal and external conflicts that precede it, this article aims to look at the phenomenon of migration, and more specifically the refugee influx, as possibly, one of the factors that can contribute to and determine political (in)stability of a state. The article describes the refugee presence in Lebanon and explores the question of its influence on the current socio-political scene in Lebanon. It shows that in the face of the specificity of the Lebanese political system, the stability of which is strongly correlated with the adequate representation of individual religious sects on the political scene, migration may be considered as one of the determinants affecting the stability of the state, and issues related to it should be taken into account when trying to solve the prevailing social discontent and the state of political instability.