Child labor has also increased with reports of children working for $5 a day or $15 a week, and landlords demanding they work for free if a family is late paying its rent. Some mothers have reportedly resorted to prostitution to support their families. Women have also been vulnerable to sexual exploitation by employers or sponsors.
"Five Syrian women told Human Rights Watch that sponsors or employers sexually harassed or tried to sexually exploit them but that they could not confront them for fear of losing residency," the report said.
And without legal status, refugees risk deportation if they move around within the country. If they travel to Syria, they might not be able to re-enter or could be detained as security risks, according to the report.
Some of the refugees interviewed had been arrested during government raids of unofficial refugee camps for not having legal status. While they were detained, some reported being beaten for the purpose of obtaining security-related information. Five refugees said that after they applied for residency and were denied, they were later arrested for lacking legal status.
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"The last thing Lebanon needs is a large, undocumented community living at the margins of society, at heightened risk of abuse," Houry stated.
Legal status aside, the refugees' needs are dire but the aid is drying up. The United Nations is reducing refugee aid due to a 2015 funding shortfall and the reduction is expected to continue in 2016. After the fifth year of conflict in Syria, there is palpable donor fatigue.
"Here people are really facing death," Michel Constantin, the regional director for the Catholic Near East Welfare Association in Beirut, told CNA. The Catholic Near East Welfare Association is a humanitarian aid agency of the Holy See.
Some refugees have cancer, hypertension, and diabetes but lack necessary medications and health care, he said. Hundreds of thousands of children have gone years without schooling.
"The situation is really miserable for everyone," he said, but insisted that donors must continue to support the Syrians. "It's really a dying population," he said.
Meanwhile, the influx of refugees combined with political instability in Lebanon has created a situation described as a "pressure cooker" and a "tinderbox."
The country has structural problems to begin with. The president must be a Maronite Christian, but because of political divisions between Sunni and Shi'a Muslim allies, there is no sitting president.
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Furthermore, the national government is generally unable to provide for the basic needs of citizens. As a result, the burden of supporting refugees falls disproportionately on the shoulders of municipalities.
The flood of refugees, many of who lack legal status, has provided a source of cheap labor for employers and depressed employment prospects for Lebanese citizens.
"This is the sad reality now," Constantin told CNA. "The middle class in Lebanon doesn't exist anymore. They are all slipping into poverty and into unemployment."
More and more young people from educated, middle-class backgrounds are leaving the country, even risking a dangerous voyage to Europe.
Constantin shared the story of one 21 year-old Lebanese Christian girl, a college graduate, who couldn't find a job and left to reach Germany with a group of Syrians. They perished in the Aegean Sea en route to Greece.
For the refugees, the present provides little hope – an estimated 70 percent of UN refugees are living in poverty and 9 in 10 are "trapped in a vicious cycle of debt," according to UN reports. The future looks bleak with no end to the Syrian conflict in sight.