Lebanon

Since the beginning of the revolt in Syria in March 2011, the number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon has significantly gone up with the escalating violence, spreading all over the country, particularly in Homs, Deir ez-Zor, Hama, Damascus, Idleb and Aleppo. Estimates vary from 5 000 individuals at the beginning of December 2011, to 15,800 individuals by the beginning of April 2012 according to the Ministry of Social Affairs (MSA), 30,000 individuals in mid-May 2012 according to Caritas, and 33,142 individuals according to the Coalition of charitable organisations for the aid of displaced Syrians to Lebanon. In its most recent report on displaced Syrians in Lebanon, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) underlined that, in collaboration with the Lebanese government and the local authorities along with international and local partners, it brings aid to over 67,000 Syrian refugees who settled in different regions in Lebanon. Before this, UNHCR had noted the exodus of some 18,000 Syrians to Lebanon through the border post at Masnaa, following the explosion that shook Damas 18 July 2012. This study covers the Syrian refugee problem in Lebanon, following the popular uprisings which developed into an armed conflict in November 2011. It aims to understand the reasons for their growing numbers; their main characteristics; the assistance structure; the political framework. It will analyze also the official position regarding the conditions of the refugees; the repercussions of the refugees’ arrival on the delicate balance of the Lebanese political system; and the mobilisation of the institutions of the country and the international community. The collection of information was carried out from early May to 30 September 2012. Focus group discussions with refugee families and interviews with managers of the organisations concerned, representatives of political parties and experts, were conducted. Press and internet sites have equally been used.

Cet article examine les flux migratoires de et vers le Liban à travers la question du genre. Il aborde, plus particulièrement, les questions suivantes : les effets de l’émigration des hommes sur la vie des femmes au Liban, l’émigration des femmes, et l’immigration féminine au Liban. Cet article montre : d’une part, que le rôle des femmes évolue positivement, mais de façon limitée, en cas d’émigration du chef de famille ; d’autre part, que l’identité du groupe se cristallise autour des femmes dans les familles émigrées. Par ailleurs, ce texte évoque les conditions de travail difficiles et la situation extrêmement précaire des femmes immigrées au Liban, plus particulièrement les domestiques et celles dites artistes. À travers ces trois questions, ce texte tente d’apporter un éclairage nouveau sur les migrations de et vers le Liban. / This paper examines migration flows from and to Lebanon in a gender perspective. It deals with the following questions : the effects of Lebanese male migration on women’s life in Lebanon, the migration of Lebanese women, and the migration of foreign women to Lebanon. This paper shows that: on the one hand, women’s role changes positively, but restrictedly, when the family chief migrates ; on the other hand that the group identity crystallizes on women among migrant’s families. Moreover, this paper looks at the hard working conditions and at the precarious situation of foreign women in Lebanon, in particular domestics and the so-called artists. By examining these three issues, this paper hopes to shed a new light on migration from and to Lebanon.

Résumé L’invasion américaine en Irak a entraîné des flux massifs de réfugiés vers le Liban, pays avec lequel les Irakiens entretiennent depuis longtemps des relations étroites. Près de 80% d’entre eux y vivent dans l’illégalité sans réel espoir de voir leur situation se régulariser. Le Liban n’est pas partie à la Convention des N-U relative au statut des réfugiés. Le système juridique connaît l’institution de l’asile mais celle-ci ne connaît pas de pratique effective. L’action du HCR au Liban est organisée sur base d’un Mémorandum of understanding qui devait organiser les modalités de la protection temporaire des Irakiens mais dont l’application s’avère difficile. La plus part des réfugiés irakiens qui bénéficient d’un séjour légal, soit une infime minorité, sont passés par une procédure de régularisation nationale. Les autres vivent dans l’illégalité, soumis aux risques de la détention et de l’expulsion en violation du principe de non refoulement. Ils travaillent en noir et payent au prix cher l’accès au logement et à la santé, sans pouvoir accéder à la propriété en leur qualité d’étranger. …………… Abstract The American invasion in Iraq led to massive refugee influxes into Lebanon, a country with which Iraqis have long had links. 80% of Iraqis in Lebanon live there illegally without any real hope of seeing their situation improve. Lebanon is not party to the 1951 UN Convention related to the refugee status. And though asylum exists in the Lebanese legal system, it is without effective application. The UNHCR action in Lebanon is based on a Memorandum of understanding which organizes the temporary protection of Iraqis but that has many problems in terms of application. Most Iraqi refugees who are legal, a very small minority, went through the national procedure of regularisation. Others live illegally in Lebanon, risking detention and expulsion in breach of the non refoulement principle. They work in the informal market and pay high prices for rent and for medical care without being able to access real estate.

Depuis mars 2011, la répression violente des manifestations contre le régime syrien a entrainé la fuite de milliers de réfugiés vers le nord du Liban. La plupart d’entre eux ont afflué par des points de passages frontaliers illégaux et ont été hébergés par des membres de leurs familles. Le Haut Comité de Secours libanais (HCS) a supervisé et coordonné l’aide humanitaire fournie par des organismes locaux et internationaux. Le nombre de réfugiés enregistrés dans la base de données établie par le HCS et le Haut-Commissariat des Nations Unies pour les Réfugiés (HCR) connait des fluctuations, mais il atteignait 3605 personnes à la fin du mois de novembre 2011. Toutefois, les ONG locales considèrent que le nombre de réfugiés syriens au Liban est plus important. L’absence de cadre juridique et de politique officielle vis-à-vis des réfugiés syriens explique la précarité de leur situation au Liban. Parallèlement, plusieurs centaines de milliers de travailleurs migrants syriens résident au Liban. Since March 2011, protests against the Syrian regime have been violently repressed resulting in thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing toward the North of Lebanon. Most of them have crossed the border illegally and have been hosted by their relatives in Lebanon. The Lebanese High Relief Committee (HRC) has supervised and coordinated humanitarian aid provided par local and international organizations. The number of refugees registered in the database of the HRC and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) varies, but it reached 3605 persons at the end of November 2011. However, local NGOs consider that the number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon is higher. The lack of legal framework and official policy in respect with the Syrian refugees explains their precarious situation. In parallel, several hundreds of thousands of Syrian migrant workers are residing in Lebanon.

Les vagues d’émigration des libanais datent de la fin du 19ème siècle. Cependant, depuis 1990, le mouvement de départ des libanais est devenu plus alarmant parce qu’il est qualitatif et non quantitatif. En effet, la crise économique, le progrès de l’enseignement, l’accroissement du nombre des diplômés, l’absence des opportunités de travail, ajoutés à la peur, aux troubles de la sécurité, toutes ces raisons poussent de plus en plus les libanais à l’émigration. L’émigration devient une véritable hémorragie. Face à ce phénomène qui vide le Liban de ses compétences, le gouvernement libanais n’a pas une politique claire. Bien au contraire , l’idéologie d’Etat au Liban, reflétée dans les discours des officiels et dans les politiques d’Etat, a tendance à vanter l’émigration comme un « atout du Liban » , puisqu’on répète souvent avec fierté que le Liban est un phœnix qui a deux ailes, une aile résidant au Liban et une aile émigrée ou tente par contre de refaire des liens avec les libanais d’Outremer, soit pour les encourager à investir au Liban, soit pour les faire participer aux élections, dans la course effrénée des groupes politiques, hantés par l’équilibre communautaire. Mais finalement, l’émigration des cerveaux est-elle une grâce ou un drame ? Emigration in Lebanon started in the 19th century. But emigration became much more intense in the 1990s as it became qualitative rather than quantitative. The economic crisis, progress in education, an increasing number of graduates, the lack of opportunities for the country’s young, and generalized insecurity are the push factors that have turned Lebanese emigration into a national hemorrhaging. The Lebanese government does not have a clear policy with regards to emigration. On the contrary, the ideology of the Lebanese state, as set out in official speeches, encourages citizens to leave the country, seeing emigration as a positive good for Lebanon. Thus, Lebanon is sometimes described as a phoenix with two wings, the resident and the emigrant one. In the best case scenario, the government tries to balance relations between residents and emigrants in order to encourage them to invest in Lebanon, or to participate in the elections, especially in a context characterised by fierce competition among communal political groups. The question then is whether one should consider emigration an advantage or disadvantage for Lebanon.

Migration policy is one of the fields least scrutinized in the Arab world. Responding to international economic trends, policy makers, social partners, and civil society players in Jordan and Lebanon have come to the realization that certain labour market bottlenecks can only be overcome by bringing in foreign workers. This has led to a significant immigration of laborers from a wide variety of countries and forced all relevant participants in the policy making process to renew their interest in coordinated temporary labour migration schemes. Both in Jordan and Lebanon, experts and policy makers alike see opportunities in these schemes that can help them meet the changing demands in their labour markets without permanently adding to their populations and labour forces. In the countries of origin, reciprocally, temporary labour migration schemes are intended to allow governments to alleviate pressures on their labour markets in the short and medium-term, and also let them reap the benefits of migration, through remittances and skill acquisition. In this study the authors will consider, based on a tripartite approach, whether the interests of employers and workers organizations coincide with those of governments in designing and implementing temporary migration schemes. The internationally codified rights of migrant workers to equality and non-discrimination and to their integration into societies and workplaces will be compared to the realities on the ground in Lebanon and Jordan. Have the limited provisions for protecting employees’ rights and a lack of their integration into the host societies negatively affected policy goals, closely linked to social cohesion? Does the effective protection of migrant workers contradict the needs of the indigenous populations in Lebanon and Jordan in general? Can the empowerment of the migrants themselves and their inclusion into the tripartite decision making process facilitate migration policy reform? Which social players can – and have – step in if the state and social partners neglect those roles foreseen for them by the international organizations dealing primarily with migrant labour, first and foremost the International Labour Organization (ILO)?

Lebanon is an emigration country by nature, but the country hosts foreign nationals too. Circular migration is absent from the Lebanese policy making. Nevertheless, various legal provisions show that the phenomenon does exist for specific categories of workers. The Lebanese legal and social framework allows circular migration in Lebanon. It appears that, within the Lebanese authorities, a debate is underway on the best manner to ensure circularity in the case of the emigration of skilled Lebanese migrants. Le Liban est un pays d’émigration par excellence mais aussi un pays d’accueil des immigrés. La migration circulaire est une notion absente du paysage juridico-politique libanais. Pourtant, plusieurs dispositions du droit libanais attestent de ce phénomène pour certaines catégories d’immigrés d’une façon claire et nette. Par ailleurs, le cadre juridique et social permet l’existence d’immigrés circulaires au Liban. Enfin, il apparaît qu’à l’échelle des autorités libanaises, une réflexion est actuellement menée sur les moyens d’assurer la circularité des élites émigrées libanaises.

Refugees from Palestine are one of the oldest refugee populations in the world. And UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which anchors Palestinian refugees’ claims for their right of return to Palestine, is now 63 years old. Yet, in Jordan and Lebanon, the refugees’ main host countries, the Palestinian presence grew in importance in domestic politics through the 2000s. In Lebanon there were the political debates surrounding the granting of some civil rights to Palestinian refugees, which culminated mid-2010. In Jordan, controversies over political naturalisation stir up violent political debates. This essay explores the reasons behind the fact that, in Jordan and Lebanon, granting civil rights to refugees raises a lot of concern. It also examines how the civil rights issue cannot be separated from that of the protection of the Palestinian “cause”, the right of return. More generally, the report investigates the various perceived challenges and the outreach of Palestinian refugees’ settlement (tawtin) in each of the two countries, before and after the late 1980s-early 1990s. Return and resettlement were taken as the two extremes of a similar demographic policy, and therefore, proved to be powerful political tools for regimes and political actors, at the local, regional and international levels. The theoretical framework of political demography and the “political economy” of Palestinian refugee trends and policies in Jordan and Lebanon also allowed for the Palestinian issue to be resituated in the history and the socio-political context of each country; thus revealing their specific challenges. The essay shows that the granting of civil rights to Palestinians is hampered by its politically-destabilising significance in host countries, where civil rights are constructed as citizenship-bound privileges. Therefore, debates on Palestinian refugees flag up deepening rifts within Jordanian and Lebanese citizenries, and diverging views on political “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1991). In Jordan, such a rift has been deepened by the recent emergence of nationalist movements and by the tensions which emerged in the wake of the Arab uprisings. Representations of national populations as closed, de jure and ethnic-based increasingly oppose views of nationhood as open, de facto and assimilationist.

Since 2012, over 4 million people have fled Syria in ‘the most dramatic humanitarian crisis that we have ever faced’ (UNHCR). By November 2015 there were 1,078,338 refugees from Syria in Lebanon, 630,776 in Jordan and 2,181,293 in Turkey. Humanitarian agencies and donor states from both the global North and the global South have funded and implemented aid programmes, and yet commentators have argued that civil society groups from the global South are the most significant actors supporting refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Whilst they are highly significant responses, however, major gaps in knowledge remain regarding the motivations, nature and implications of Southern-led responses to conflict-induced displacement. This project draws on multi-sited ethnographic and participatory research with refugees from Syria and their aid providers in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey to critically examine why, how and with what effect actors from the South have responded to the displacement of refugees from Syria. The main research aims are: 1. identifying diverse models of Southern-led responses to conflict-induced displacement, 2. examining the (un)official motivations, nature and implications of Southern-led responses, 3. examining refugees’ experiences and perceptions of Southern-led responses, 4. exploring diverse Southern and Northern actors’ perceptions of Southern-led responses, 5. tracing the implications of Southern-led initiatives for humanitarian theory and practice. Based on a critical theoretical framework inspired by post-colonial and feminist approaches, the project contributes to theories of humanitarianism and debates regarding donor-recipient relations and refugees’ agency in displacement situations. It will also inform the development of policies to most appropriately address refugees’ needs and rights. This highly topical and innovative project thus has far-reaching implications for refugees and local communities, academics, policy-makers and practitioners.

: In their study of prejudice and intolerance in Italy, Sniderman and colleagues found that for Italians generalised mistrust and the feeling of economic insecurity are essential determinants in negative attitudes toward immigrants and that categorization is the mediator in the model. The same model tested in Italy, namely the “Two Flavours” model, has been applied in the Dutch context to explore the factors that can best predict the prejudice of Dutch people toward ethnic minorities in the Netherlands. Expressive and psychological factors as well as instrumental, rational factors are employed to predict prejudice. Categorization is hypothesised to be the most proximate factor accounting for prejudice. The results demonstrate the importance of categorization and mistrust in the formation of prejudicial attitudes, but suggest no mediator effect for mistrust, economic insecurity and categorization.

This report covers migration in 18 EU neighbouring countries, including: Algeria; Armenia; Azerbaijan; Belarus; Egypt; Georgia; Jordan; Lebanon; Libya; Mauritania; Moldova; Morocco; Palestine; Russia; Syria; Tunisia; Turkey and Ukraine. Each country report provides the most recent update on the demographic, legal, and socio-political aspects of both inward and outward migration stocks and flows.

This report covers socio-political developments in 2009 and 2010 related to migration from, or return to, the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), and also to the status of the Palestinian refugees, especially those residing in Lebanon. This report takes its data from the 2010 Migration’s Survey in the Palestinian Territory of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), as well as the Socio- Economic Survey of Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon, developed jointly by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the American University of Beirut (AUB). The report conclude that emigration from the oPt will continue to be related with the political context and living conditions of the Palestinian people under the Israeli occupation. In addition, the Palestinian refugee problem will remains a central issue which, if not resolved on a just basis and in line with international law, will hamstring the peace process. Résumé Ce rapport couvre les développements sociopolitiques en 2009-2010 relatifs : d’une part, aux migrations de, ou de retour vers, les Territoires palestiniens occupés ; d’autre part, aux statuts des réfugiés palestiniens, en particulier ceux vivants au Liban. Ce rapport s’appuie principalement sur deux études : Migration’s Survey in the Palestinian Territory réalisée par le Bureau central palestinien de la statistique (PCBS) et Socio-Economic Survey of Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon réalisée par l’UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) et l’Université américaine de Beyrouth (AUB). Ce rapport conclut que l’émigration depuis les Territoires palestiniens occupés est liée au contexte politique et aux conditions de vie des Palestiniens vivants sous occupation israélienne. De plus, la question des réfugiés palestiniens représente un problème central qui, s’il n’est pas réglé de façon juste, selon le droit international, handicape le processus de paix.

'This research aims at mapping inter-ethnic relations in contested cities in the Eastern Mediterranean by comparing urban dynamics in Lebanon, Israel and Palestine. While most of the geopolitical scholarship on ethnonational conflicts in the region has focused on the territorial struggles between rival nation-states and other regional actors, this project proposes a historical anthropology of intra-urban borderlands consisting of ethnic groups sharing the same city. Political adversaries, Lebanon and Israel share nevertheless a fundamental commonality: they both politicized the Ottoman legacy of communal autonomy and religious sectarianism. Rescaling ethnic conflicts from the regional to the urban arena, this project proposes a “bottom up” analysis of the political mobilization of territoriality, identity, religion and nation. To this end, the research examines how urban space, violent conflict and national identities have been both represented and produced in contested cities since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Against the background of a century-long conflict between the Jewish and Palestinian national movements in Israel/Palestine and the sectarian struggles over political power between Christians and Muslims in Lebanon, this project studies the relations between opposing community-building efforts in war-torn urban settings. Focusing on cities like Beirut, Sidon, Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa, I historicize the problematic place they occupy in the popular, political and sociological imagination. Through ethnographic and historical analysis I show how Jewish, Muslim and Christian citizens, implicated in relations of interdependence, strive to define their respective collective identity in relation to the nation. These processes serve as a lens through which the research engages a wider set of questions in political sociology and urban anthropology regarding ethnic violence, citizenship, and identity-making as embedded in practices of “making place.”'

La femme possède un statut bien avancé au sein de la société libanaise : la Constitution libanaise proclame l’égalité entre les citoyens. Quelques lois et pratiques restent, toutefois, discriminatoires à l’égard de la femme, notamment la loi sur la nationalité et la loi sur le statut personnel. Une discrimination sociale très grave existe en ce qui concerne les femmes travaillant à domicile; elles subissent plusieurs formes de racisme et d’exploitation, et leur protection juridique est très faible - une situation qui encourage la traite et a poussé plusieurs Etats à interdire à leurs citoyens de travailler au Liban en tant que domestiques. La réglementation distingue quatre catégories d’étrangers travaillant au Liban ; seulement deux catégories peuvent y faire venir leurs familles. Pour améliorer le statut de la femme, beaucoup d’efforts sont encore à fournir, notamment au niveau de la justice et de la ratification de nombre de conventions internationales. Le statut de la femme au Liban est acceptable pour les femmes immigrées, à l’exception des femmes qui travaillent en tant que domestiques : une situation qui nous permet de dire qu’elles ne constituent pas un groupe social opprimé au sens de la Convention de 1951. Abstract : Women have good status in Lebanese society: the Lebanese constitution insists on equality between citizens. Some laws and practices, however, remain discriminatory, especially the law on nationality and the law on personal status. Women working as domestic workers are grossly discriminated against; they suffer from racism and exploitation and they have little legal protection. This situation fosters trafficking and has led several states to forbid their nationals from working as domestic workers in Lebanon. Regulation distinguishes four categories of foreign workers in Lebanon; only two categories can have their family join them. Much still needs to be done to improve the status of women, in particular in the justice sector and several international conventions have not yet been ratified. The status of women in Lebanon is acceptable for immigrant women with the exception of domestic workers. Women are not an oppressed social group in the sense of the 1951 Convention.

Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts begann eine kontinuierliche Auswanderung aus dem Gebiet des heutigen Libanons, die bis heute anhält. Die Migrationsströme änderten mehrfach ihre Richtung, wobei die libanesischen Migranten in den letzten drei Jahrzehnten verstärkt nach Australien, in die USA und nach Deutschland wandern. Durch die Änderung der Migrationsrichtung bildeten sich Gemeinschaften, deren Mitglieder weltweit verstreut leben, wobei sie ihren Zusammenhalt mit der Herkunft der ausgewanderten Vorfahren aus dem gleichen Herkunftsort (-dorf) begründen. Es entstanden somit globale Dorfgemeinschaften. Ausgehend von den libanesischen Dörfern Aitou, Hadchit und Ehden untersuchen die Projektmitarbeiter die globalen Gemeinschaften und ihre Verbindungen in die Länder Australien, die USA und Deutschland. Die Projektmitarbeiter schlagen das Konzept der globalen Dorfgemeinschaft als neues theoretisches Modell vor, um Prozesse der Vergemeinschaftung und Verräumlichung in der globalisierten Welt zu untersuchen und zu verstehen. Die Ergebnisse der Untersuchung zeigen auch die Möglichkeiten auf, die Mitglieder der globalen Gemeinschaften an der gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung ihrer Lebensländer partizipieren zu lassen. Die Zunahme des digitalen Austauschs von Informationen und der Vergemeinschaftung im Web 2.0, die unkomplizierte Möglichkeit des Ortswechsels und die allgemeine politische Liberalisierung in der globalisierten Welt führen in arabischsprachigen Ländern dazu, dass die weltweit verbundene Dorfgemeinschaften zunehmend an wirtschaftlichem und politischem Einfluss gewinnen. Diese Gemeinschaften sind durch ein globales Geflecht enger kommunikativer und emotionaler Beziehungen unter ihren Mitgliedern gekennzeichnet, die ihr Zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl über den gemeinsamen Herkunftsort konstruieren und daher als Diasporas bezeichnet werden. Die Projektmitarbeiter definieren Diaspora als soziale Ordnung die nationalstaatliche Ordnungen durchbricht. In ihrer Studien stellen sie den Begriff Diaspora in den Kontext der globalisierten Welt. Hierfür entwickeln die Projektmitarbeiter die neue Theorie der globalen Dorfgemeinschaft, die das Konzept Gemeinschaft von TÖNNIES (1887) weiterentwickelt sowie mit der Theorie der sozialen Praktik nach SCHATZKI (2002) und dem Begriff Diaspora verbindet. Um die Wechselwirkungen zwischen modernen Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT) und den Prozessen der Vergemeinschaftung zu verstehen, entwerfen die Projektmitarbeiter neue Forschungsmethoden. Diese führen die methodologischen Gedanken der szientistischen Sozialwissenschaft mit denen der Ethnomethodologie zusammen.

The objectives of the Study are two-fold: To analyze the key labour market determinants of migration flows from selected Arab Mediterranean Countries (Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and the Occupied Palestinian Territories), with a particular emphasis on demographic pressures, wage differentials and relative income disparities with the EU, employment policies, labour market flexibility and unemployment rates; this analysis includes the impact of migration on the labour markets of Arab Mediterranean Country (AMCs) labour markets; To propose a series of specific recommendations to improve the design of the EU’s migration policies towards AMCs and policy options available to them for the management of mismatches between labour supply and demand.

"Theoretical Background and objectives In the context of the combination of escalated sectarian conflicts in Iraq and Syria, and home-grown conflicts around real and perceived attacks on Islam and its symbols in the West (from Rushdie to Charlie Hebdo), increased numbers of Muslim youth in Western countries have embraced radical forms of Islam and have sometimes become actively involved in violence, both at home and abroad. Beyond impressionistic evidence on a few active radicals, extremely little is known about the incidence among countries’ Muslim populations of adherence to radical versions of Islam and support for religiously-motivated violence. To answer these questions, cross-national surveys across Muslim populations in different countries are necessary, but apart from the very descriptive surveys by the US American Pew Research Institute, which are moreover not publicly accessible for secondary analysis, no such information is available. Existing research also leaves another major question unanswered, namely to what extent religious radicalism is specific to current Islam or whether it is comparable to what we find in other contemporary religions, particularly within Christianity. This project wants to fill these voids. A first step was an analysis based on the SCIICS survey. This was the first representative survey study to compare religious fundamentalism and outgroup hostility between Muslims and Christians (Koopmans 2015), and as such it attracted worldwide media attention. While the study revealed large differences between the two religious groups even when controlled for a range of socio-economic and demographic variables, the limitation of the study to two Muslim ethnic groups as well as the fact that it compared Muslims of immigrant origin to autochthonous Christians limits the generalizability of its findings. Moreover, the SCIICS survey did not include questions about support for religiously-motivated violence and extremist religious organizations. Research design To overcome these shortcomings, we are conducting two studies: Religious Fundamentalism and Radicalization Survey and Jihadi Radicalization in Europe Database. The first project is a representative survey study of Muslims, Christians, Jews, and non-believers in 2017 in the following 8 countries: Germany, the United States, Cyprus, Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Kenya. The choice of countries allows for a broad range of cross-national and cross-sectional comparisons. For instance, all three of the world’s Abrahamic religions are represented in our sample, allowing us to investigate similarities and differences between these three religious groups. In addition to comparisons across religious groups, we are also interested in examining variances within the religious groups. Therefore we sampled across different branches of Islam, i.e. Sunni Muslims (Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Kenya, and Cyprus), Shia Muslims (Lebanon) and Alevites (Turkey, Cyprus); of Christianity, i.e. Catholic and Protestant Christians (Germany, and the USA), Greek Orthodox Christians (Cyprus, Lebanon), Maronite Catholics (Lebanon) and the generally more conservative Christianity of Sub-Saharan Africa (Kenya); and of Judaism, i.e. both Orthodox and Reformist branches (Israel and the USA). Our research design also allows us to investigate the role of immigration and integration experiences in religious radicalization. The study not only includes two Western immigration countries with strongly divergent immigrant integration policies (Germany and the United States), but also three countries with autochthonous Muslim and Christian populations (Kenya, Cyprus, and Lebanon). Furthermore, both in Germany and the United States, we oversample Christians of immigrant origin, thus extending the range of comparisons to a variety of immigrant and native groups and augmenting the possibility of isolating the role of immigration. Apart from the usual socio-economic and demographic control variables, the surveys included questions on religiosity, religious knowledge, fundamentalism, out-group hostility, intergroup contacts, discrimination, adherence to conspiracy theories, violence legitimation, and support for extremist groups. Moreover we employed a survey experiment to test the effect of religious scripture on religious violence legitimation. The broad range of variables and the experiment included in the surveys will enable rigorous hypotheses testing, which will help us uncover causal mechanisms behind religious fundamentalism and radicalization. In the second project Jihadi Radicalization in Europe Database, we aggregate profiles of Jihadist individuals from publicly available information. The main units of analysis of this database are people from four European countries (Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK) who fit in any of the following characteristics: People (including their partners and children from the age of 15 who accompanying them), who have traveled to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan or other conflict regions involving Muslims, acting out of their Islamist conviction (the so-called foreign fighters); people who have actively recruited others as foreign fighters or motivated others to join through propaganda activities; people who were involved in the aiding, planning or conducting of Islamist terrorist activity in Europe or were suspected thereof; people who supported, justified or glorified the use of violence in the name of Islam through propaganda activities; people who are members of jihadi-Salafist and Islamist organizations, which support the use of violence. The database will primarily consist of biographical and sociodemographic information on individuals, with the aim of identifying common characteristics. Using the sociodemographic data, we aim to investigate, what kind of people are more susceptible to radicalization, whereas we will use the biographic data to gain insights into contexts of radicalization. In addition to these characteristics, social contacts and networks of the individuals will also be registered, in order to analyze the social network structures. This information will be used to explore group-specific radicalization processes as well as to identify central influential figures within the networks. The relevant data will be gathered through an online and media research. A variety of sources of data will be used to collect relevant information such as newspaper articles, interviews, online-blogs, biographies, news databases such as LexisNexis®, and court proceedings, in order to gather as much data as possible on the individuals. The database can be understood as an aggregation of publicly available data on European Islamists."

STRENGTHS aims to provide effective community-based health care implementation strategies to scale-up the delivery and uptake of effective mental health interventions in different country contexts. The current refugee crisis across Europe and the Middle East effects both individual refugees’ psychological well-being, as they face extreme stressors in their flight from their home country, but also has large effects on the healthcare systems of countries housing refugees. In reponse to this crisis, the STRENGTHS project aims to provide a framework for scaling-up the delivery and uptake of effective community-based mental health strategies to address the specific needs of refugees within and outside Europe’s borders. STRENGTHS will outline necessary steps needed to integrate evidence based low-intensity psychological interventions for common mental disorders into health systems in Syria’s surrounding countries taking up the majority of refugees (Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan), a LMIC (Egypt) and European countries (Germany, Switzerland the Netherlands and Sweden). The consortium is a unique partnership between academics, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), international agencies and local partners with the responsibility to provide and scale-up evidence-based mental health and psychosocial support interventions for refugees. Key preparatory steps in the local political, regulatory and governance processes for uptake and scaling-up of the intervention and key contextual and system-related factors for integration will be validated for the real-life impact on the responsiveness of the system. The low-intensity interventions and training materials will be adapted and implemented in Syrian refugees within Syria’s surrounding countries taking up the majority of refugees (Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan), a LMIC (Egypt) and European countries (Germany, Switzerland the Netherlands and Sweden). STRENGTHS will disseminate and promote ‘buy-in’ of a validated framework for large-scale implementation of the low intensity interventions to providers of health and social services, policy makers and funding agencies.

Le Liban est un pays d’émigration par excellence. 40% des personnes émigrées sont hautement qualifiées, ce qui affecte le pays aux niveaux social, démographique et surtout économique.La loi libanaise n’impose pas de conditions pour limiter cette émigration, mais des efforts sont menés par le Liban, parmi lesquels on peut citer des projets avec le PNUD et plusieurs pays de l’Union européenne, afin d’encadrer l’émigration hautement qualifiée et de favoriser leur retour. Ces efforts ont été jusqu’à maintenant inefficaces pour plusieurs raisons, et notamment du fait du système économique libéral.Par ailleurs, la loi libanaise pose de nombreuses conditions et des obstacles visant à limiter l’immigration hautement qualifiée. Il est difficile pour un étranger hautement qualifié d'obtenir un permis de travail au Liban. Seul 1,5% des permis de travail accordés par le ministère du travail libanais en 2008 concernait des personnes hautement qualifiées. Lebanon is a prototype of a country of emigration of highly qualified people. 40% of Lebanese emigrates are highly qualified. The emigration of these persons affects Lebanon on social, demographic and especially economic level. Lebanese law does not impose restrictive rules to limit the emigration of highly qualified persons neither to encourage them to return. The efforts made by the Lebanese government to frame the emigration of highly qualified persons and to foster their return (projects with the UNDP and some EU countries ) are still now inefficient for many reasons such as the liberal economic system. Conditions and hindrances are provided to limit highly skilled immigration. Only 1.5% of work permits delivered by the Lebanese labour ministry in 2008 concerned highly qualified migrants.