The German government is determined to reach a deal with Damascus to accelerate the repatriation of Syrian war refugees, despite concerns about the humanitarian situation in a country where violence continues and the economy and infrastructure have been devastated.
In late September, Germany Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told the Rheinische Post newspaper that he intended to “reach an agreement with Syria this year and then initially deport criminals and later people without residence permits.”
But that might be easier said than done, for both legal and humanitarian reasons. “Syria is at its limit; its capacity to take in refugees has already been exhausted,” Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, director of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) in Syria, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper last week. “We are dealing with one of the biggest refugee crises in the world there.” Sending more Syrians back to their home country will only worsen the situation, he warned.
Alexander Dobrindt said a deal would be struck with Syria before the end of this yearImage: Jens Krick/Flashpic/picture alliance
Humanitarian catastrophe
The German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development says that some 7 million people remain internally displaced within Syria. This is on top of the 1 million war refugees who have returned to the country — mainly from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey — in the nine months after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in December last year. In August, it was reported that 1,300 Syrians had returned home from Germany since the fall of Assad.
One refugee in Germany was Tareq Alaows, who fled in 2015 because he was a critic of al-Assad’s regime. Now spokesperson for the German refugees’ rights organization Pro Asyl, he visited his home country late last year to form his own impression of the situation there. The UNHCR’s verdict confirmed everything he had seen there, he said.
“There aren’t even homes for people when they go back,” Alaows told DW. “What I saw in Damascus was several families having to share one apartment — even in the apartments that exist the rents are unaffordable. That’s why four or five families will share four- or five-room apartments inside Damascus.”
Syrian infrastructure and food distribution is still desperately in need of reconstruction. According to United Nations calculations, 16.7 million Syrians — out of a total of 25 million inhabitants — are dependent on humanitarian aid.
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Security disaster
This humanitarian crisis is exacerbated by a volatile security situation that is partly caused by the fact that small arms became widely circulated in Syria in the aftermath of the war. “There’s barely a household in Damascus but also other cities that doesn’t have a gun,” said Alaows. “And if there is an escalation the whole country could explode.” Indeed, there have already been well-reported acts of violence across Syria against minorities including Druze, Alawites, and LGBTQ people.
“What we need is long-term safety in the country, then a lot of people might proactively return,” said Alaows. But sending people back into that situation for the sake of what Alaows calls “symbolic politics” will only worsen the situation in Syria and cause more people to flee once again.
In a statement to DW, the German government confirmed that it was in contact with the new Syrian government, currently led by the former rebel commander Ahmed al-Sharaa. “The Federal Ministry of the Interior also considers it necessary that persons who commit criminal offences in Germany and do not have a right of residence return to their home countries,” the Interior Ministry statement added.
But even if the government were able to negotiate a repatriation deal with the Syrian government, that would only regulate the practicalities of such deportations. It wouldn’t mean that more people could immediately be deported. “Even such a deal will not change the fact that every individual case has to be assessed,” said Valentin Feneberg, research assistant at the Chair of Public Policy and Law at the Institute of Political Science at Leuphana University, Lüneburg.
People who come to Germany and seek asylum first have their cases examined by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF). If they are turned down, they can then appeal to the courts, who are also obliged to make a case-by-case assessment. If the person loses that appeal, they will lose their right of residence. But if they do not leave the country voluntarily, the decision to deport them is separate — and the humanitarian situation in the country of origin plays a role in that decision.
“Whether an individual has committed a crime doesn’t automatically mean they can be deported,” Feneberg said. “That decision is always based on the situation in the country of origin.” That means that, according to German law, even a convicted criminal cannot be deported if they are at risk of torture, execution, or other serious human rights abuses in their country of origin.
No longer ‘tolerated?’
Daniel Thym, professor of public, European and international law at the University of Konstanz, confirmed this, but added that because the Syrian war has ended, he now expected fewer Syrians to be granted protected status in Germany.
“Then it’s a political question of which persons to then prioritize,” he told DW. “And there politicians say, understandably maybe, we will focus on people with a criminal record first, but that’s a political prioritization that has nothing to do with the legal assessment.”
The plan to increase deportations has also drawn significant criticism for moral and economic reasons. “Anyone who wants to deport people to Syria now is not only morally bankrupt; they also have no idea. Not about the situation in Syria, but also not about the situation here in Germany,” Left Party leader Jan van Aken said in a statement.
More and more Syrians are now working in Germany, which, given the country’s aging population, needs to attract more labor. According to the Federal Employment Agency, some 236,000 Syrian citizens are now in work and paying social insurance contributions in Germany.
Legal caveats to deportation plans
The latest Interior Ministry figures say that just over 225,000 people of various nationalities in Germany are legally obliged to leave the country. Of these, about 40,000 people are students, employees, or tourists who have simply outstayed their visas.
Syrians in Germany celebrated the fall of the Assad regime, and some have started to return homeImage: Andreas Arnold/dpa/picture alliance
Most of the rest have a status known as “Duldung” or “tolerated”, which means they aren’t deported either because they don’t have documents establishing their nationality, because their identity can’t be conclusively established, or because they have an illness that can’t be treated in their home country. Official figures say that there are 9,600 Syrians in Germany with tolerated status — these are the people who Germany could theoretically deport to Syria.
But there are even legal caveats to that, according to Feneberg. “There is in Germany and in Europe the possibility of being granted protection if the humanitarian situation is dangerous enough to be life-threatening,” he said. That might include a situation where there is extreme poverty throughout the country or in particular regions. “That could — and this is just my prognosis — become very important for decisions on Syria.” In other words, assessments such as the one made by UNHCR and other international bodies could still play into German court decisions.
Edited by Kyra Levine
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