For greater than a decade, Syrians have been the world’s largest refugee inhabitants.
Greater than 6 million Syrians have fled the nation since 2011, when an rebellion in opposition to the regime of Bashar Assad reworked right into a 13-year civil battle. Most ended up in neighboring nations equivalent to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, whereas a large minority wound up in Europe. However the overthrow of the Assad regime in late 2024 by opposition forces led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has seemingly opened a window for his or her return, and tens of hundreds of former refugees have since made the choice to return to their homeland.
What number of and who decides to return, and the circumstances beneath which they reintegrate into Syrian society, could have monumental implications for each Syria and the nations they resettled in. It additionally offers a possibility for migration students like ourselves to higher perceive what occurs when refugees lastly return residence.
Earlier analysis has proven that Syrian refugees who’re making an attempt to resolve whether or not to return are motivated extra by situations in Syria than by coverage choices the place they’ve resettled. However particular person experiences additionally play an vital position. Counterintuitively, refugees who’ve been uncovered to violence through the Syrian civil battle are literally extra tolerant of and higher at assessing the chance of returning to Syria, analysis has proven.
However such analysis was performed whereas Assad was nonetheless in energy, and it has solely been a number of weeks since Assad fell. Because of this, it’s unclear what number of Syrians will resolve to return. In any case, the present authorities is transitional, and the nation will not be totally unified.
The danger of return
Within the month after Assad’s fall, about 125,000 Syrians headed residence, primarily from Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. However for almost all of these but to return, vital questions and concerns stay.
In the beginning, what is going to governance seem like beneath the transitional authorities? To date, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s rule beneath Ahmed al-Sharaa has steered the group will embrace inclusivity towards Syria’s numerous array of ethnic and spiritual minorities. Even so, some observers fear in regards to the group’s prior connections to militant Islamist teams, together with al-Qaida.
Equally, preliminary fears about restrictions on girls’s participation in public life have principally been assuaged, regardless of the transitional authorities appointing solely two girls to workplace.
Syrians debating whether or not to return residence should additionally confront the financial devastation wrought by years of battle, authorities mismanagement and corruption, and worldwide sanctions positioned on the Assad regime.
Sanctions blocking the entry of medicines and tools, together with Assad’s bombing of infrastructure all through the battle, have crippled the nation’s medical system.
In 2024, 16.7 million Syrians – greater than half the nation’s inhabitants – have been in want of important humanitarian help, whilst little or no was accessible. In early 2025, the U.S. introduced that it was extending a partial, six-month reprieve of sanctions to permit humanitarian teams to offer primary companies equivalent to water, sanitation and electrical energy.
However rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure will take for much longer, and Syrian refugees should weigh whether or not they’re higher off remaining of their host nations. That is very true for individuals who have labored to construct new lives over an extended interval in exile from Syria.
The caretaker Syrian authorities will even have to deal with the problem of property restitution. Many people might need to return residence provided that they certainly have a house to return to. And the coverage of compelled property transfers and the settlement by Alawite and minority teams allied to the Assad regime in former Sunni areas vacated through the battle complicates the problem.
Continued welcome in Europe?
Because the begin of the civil battle, roughly 1.3 million Syrians have sought safety in Europe, nearly all of them arriving in 2015 and 2016 and settling in nations equivalent to Germany and Sweden. As of December 2023, 780,000 people nonetheless held refugee standing and subsidiary safety – an extra type of worldwide safety – with the rest having acquired both long-term residency or citizenship.
Syria’s 13-year civil battle lowered many houses to rubble.
Ercin Erturk/Anadolu by way of Getty Photographs
Subsidiary safety was granted to those that didn’t meet the stringent necessities for refugee standing beneath the Geneva Conventions – which requires a well-founded worry of persecution primarily based on race, faith, nationality, political opinion or membership of a specific social group – however “would face a real risk of suffering serious harm” if returned to their nations of origin.
Recognition charges for Syrians have remained constantly excessive between 2015 and 2023, however the breakdown between subsidiary safety and refugee standing has fluctuated over time, with 81% receiving refugee standing in 2015 versus 68% receiving subsidiary safety in 2023.
For Syrians within the EU who maintain refugee standing or subsidiary safety, in addition to for these with pending asylum claims, the longer term could be very unsure. In accordance with the Geneva Conventions, EU regulation permits governments to revoke, finish or refuse to resume their standing if the rationale to supply safety has ceased, which many nations imagine is the case after Assad’s fall.
Since then, at the least 12 European nations have suspended asylum purposes of Syrian nationals. Some nations, equivalent to Austria, have threatened to implement a program of “orderly return and deportation.”
Circumstances in Turkey and Lebanon
A a lot bigger variety of Syrians obtained safety in neighboring nations, specifically Turkey (2.9 million), Lebanon (755,000) and Jordan (611,000), although estimates of unregistered Syrians are a lot larger. In Turkey, which hosts the biggest variety of Syrian refugees, Syrians are afforded solely short-term safety standing.
In principle, this standing permits them entry to work, well being care and training. However in apply, Syrian refugees in Turkey haven’t at all times been capable of take pleasure in these rights. Coupled with anti-immigrant sentiments worsened by the 2023 earthquake and presidential election, life has remained troublesome for a lot of.
And whereas Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has publicly said that Syrians ought to return residence in keeping with their very own timeline, his earlier scapegoating of the refugee inhabitants signifies that he might finally wish to see them returned – particularly as many in Turkey now imagine Syrian refugees don’t have any cause to remain within the nation.
Syrians in Lebanon, which hosts the biggest variety of Syrian refugees per capita, face even larger financial and authorized challenges. The nation will not be a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, and its stringent home asylum regulation has granted residency to solely 17% of the greater than one million Syrians who dwell within the nation.
Lebanon has been pressuring Syrian refugees to depart the nation for years by way of insurance policies of marginalization and compelled deportation, which have intensified in current months with a authorities scheme to deport Syrians not registered with the United Nations. As of 2023, 84% of Syrian households have been residing in excessive poverty. Their vulnerability was exacerbated by the current battle between Hezbollah and Israel in Lebanon, which led 425,000 Syrians to flee battle as soon as once more and return to Syria though situations on the time weren’t protected.
Testing the water
Providing go-and-see visits – whereby one member of a household is allowed to return to a house nation to guage the scenario and subsequently permitted to reenter the host nation with out dropping their authorized standing – is the norm in lots of refugee conditions. The coverage is getting used at current for Ukrainians in Europe and was used prior to now for Bosnian and South Sudanese refugees.
The identical coverage may serve Syrian refugees now – certainly, Turkey lately carried out such a plan. However above all, we imagine returns to Syria must be voluntary, not compelled. Getting the situations proper for returning refugees could have monumental implications for rebuilding the nation and conserving the peace – or not – within the years to come back.
