Syrian property law could prevent thousands of refugees from returning home-Lebanon

Lebanese foreign minister Gebran Bassil warned Saturday that a recent Syrian property law could prevent thousands of refugees from returning home. The law would allow the Syrian government to seize private property - while only paying compensation under certain circumstances.

Foreign minister Gebran Bassil of Lebanon warned that the real estate legislation passed in Syria in early April could dispossess hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and leave them permanently displaced in Lebanon. 

"The inability for the displaced to prove ownership in the provided timeframe could cause them to lose their property and dispossess them of one of their main incentives to return to Syria", Bassil said in a letter to his Syrian counterpart.

The new law, known as Decree 10, allows the Syrian government to seize private properties for reconstruction projects and compensate proven owners with shares in the new projects, AFP reports.

Once an area is declared a new development zone, property owners must prove their ownership within 30 days of the public announcement. In that case, they will be compensated with shares in the new projects. If they fail to prove their ownership, they face confiscation.

Many refugees living in third countries are not in possession of the right paperwork necessary to prove that they are rightful property owners or do not have enough time to claim their land. 

Aid groups say that the chaos of war means that only few will be able to return within the limited time frame. In addition, many documents proving ownership have been lost or destroyed in the civil war. According to the French daily newspaper Le Monde, the United Nations estimates that only 9 percent of Syrian refugees abroad are in possession of such documents.

Earlier last week, Lebanese President Michel Aoun demanded that Syrian refugees "return to safe areas in their country, without waiting for an ultimate solution to the Syrian crisis", as AFP reports. Although some refugees have returned to certain areas of the country, the United Nations says that the country overall remains unsafe for civilians to return to.

Lebanon, a country of just over four million, hosts more than a million Syrian refugees and has seen its infrastructure strained by this influx of refugees. Overall, the Syrian conflict has forced more than five million people to flee outside the country and has since 2011 displaced over six million internally.