This report, part of the Housing Monitor’s ongoing work, examines housing vulnerabilities and eviction threats affecting populations in Lebanon, with a particular focus on Syrian refugees. Building on earlier documentation of legal measures, security raids, and forced eviction pressures between 2022 and 2023, it shows how policies increasingly framed as “voluntary return” have been accompanied by restrictive and pressuring practices, including forced evictions, deportations, and heightened housing insecurity, further intensified by the wars in 2024 and 2026 and their displacement impacts.

Covering the period from September 2024 to April 2026, the report traces developments through the end of the 2024 war, the 2025 ceasefire and political shifts in Syria, and renewed escalation of war in Lebanon in 2026. It argues that the situation of Syrian refugees cannot be understood through a simple distinction between asylum and return, but rather as a continuous process shaped by legal, housing, and security vulnerabilities.

The report highlights how “voluntary return” is produced within a context of constrained choices, where worsening conditions in Syria—such as housing destruction, insecurity, and economic collapse—intersect with restrictive and exclusionary conditions in Lebanon, including wars, mass forced evictions, and discriminatory measures. These combined pressures generate an interlinked process between forced displacement and constrained return, rather than genuinely free choice.

Finally, it stresses that the absence of a rights-based housing and asylum framework in Lebanon, combined with gaps in international protection, actively produces instability and displacement. It calls for stronger housing protections, an end to forced evictions, and a rethinking of return policies to ensure genuine voluntariness and long-term monitoring.