This widespread hostility prompted Erdogan to undertake a drastic policy shift. Some measures aim to decrease the visibility of Syrian refugees, including removing Arabic shop signs across the country in an effort to appease public acrimony over their presence.

Social media has been full of videos depicting the abuse of Syrian children, including a video showing a Lebanese man encouraging his son to beat a Syrian child, another video of a man insulting and torturing a Syrian child, as well as reports of human trafficking, prostitution and drug networks that exploit the circumstances of displaced persons. However, the hate speech against Syrians has escalated in recent months as politicians and other officials have blamed Syrians for the unemployment and economic crises facing Lebanon.

It has become illegal to issue verdicts of banishment or exile against the Egyptians. Even successive Egyptian constitutions have categorically prohibited exile. It is saddening to see exile de facto being practised against the Egyptians in the present time. Such dangerous transformation has not taken place as a result of constitutional amendments or the enforcement of laws that allowed for what had been prohibited in the past, but rather the outcome of the state’s recent practices with the clear purpose of placing restrictions on the public, confiscating political action and raising the cost of practicing politics.

Life for Syrian refugees in Lebanon has become increasingly harder, especially after 5 January 2015, when Lebanon tightened the documentation list mandatory to enter the country. Some municipalities have set up curfews for Syrians, not allowing them outside their home after nightfall, or the Lebanese Army has evicted them for “security reasons”.

Netanyahu has caved into the pressure of his coalition and the media campaign, leaving asylum seekers and the residents of south Tel Aviv in limbo and without a concrete plan for dealing with the asylum seekers in Israel.

According to human rights organizations, including the African Refugee Development Center, deportation to a third country is not a tenable solution. In some cases, they say, the returnees have their travel documents stolen, experience arbitrary arrest, demands for bribes and even torture. However, the policy is aligned with the current trends in the Trump administration against immigrants and Islamophobia in Europe.

Isolated for decades and largely forgotten by the world, many Sahrawis still believe that they will one day return to the lands of their ancestors.

In some cases, parents with unregistered marriages, aware of the likely future issues for their children if their births are not legally registered, have resorted to fraud. For instance, some women in Lebanon told the NRC that they had borrowed relatives’ identification documents when giving birth at a hospital in order to make sure the child’s birth could be registered.

Syrian refugees have joined existing refugee groups in the Middle East and North Africa. Our map shows the impact of refugees throughout the region.

The GCC wants Europe to take the refugees, while the latter prefer Europe to the Gulf countries. Muslims make their annual pilgrimage to Mecca, but today, at least for the Syrians and other Muslims and non-Muslims in need, the qiblah is Europe.