Globally the human displacement crisis has reached unprecedented heights, with one in every 67 people forced from their homes. During its 14 long years of civil war, Syria was the largest contributor to this crisis, being overtaken only in 2025 by Sudan. Syria’s conflict forced more than 13.5 million people to flee their homes. Of these, 7.4 million remained within Syria, becoming Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), while six million Syrians fled abroad to nearby countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. A further one million Syrians moved abroad, most of whom went to Germany and elsewhere in Europe, as well as the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Following the collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024, Syrians are finally able, in theory, to return home. At airports and border crossings, Syrians dance, sing, and cheer as they reunite with their families, jubilant to be able to finally come back to a country whose sounds and sights live on in treasured memory. IDPs who have been forced to live in displacement camps or with family members in Syria can finally return to their own towns; the lucky few return to their old homes. The caustic rhetoric of the heightened anti-immigration movement around the world often depicts immigrants as willful intruders. But Syrian returnees demonstrate that their decisions to leave home resulted from a wrenching choice made under extreme duress—the mass violence and destruction of a civil war that claimed the lives of more than 606,000 people.
The devastation of Syria’s infrastructure and economy, along with the Trump administration’s slashing of foreign aid (the United States had previously been the largest single donor during the Syrian civil war) have complicated Syrians’ return. In addition, continuing violence inside Syria and bombardment from neighboring Israel threaten the country’s safety, stability, and ability to reconstruct. Uncertainties around the Syrian transitional government’s willingness to implement meaningful transitional justice, to hold human rights violators accountable and heal divisions in society, as well as concerns over reconstruction funding, further jeopardize Syrians’ efforts to rebuild their lives.
Returning Home
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM)’s latest data, from June 2025, a reported 1.8 million Syrians, both IDPs and people displaced abroad, have returned since December 2024. That figure includes 482,761 Syrians who returned from abroad. Approximately half of these Syrians returned from Turkey, one-third from Lebanon, and the rest from Jordan, Iraq, and other countries. Syrians often endured difficult situations of protracted displacement while living abroad. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 90 percent of Syrians living in Turkey and Jordan could not afford basic necessities. Human Rights Watch found that nearly half of the 1.5 million Syrian children living in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey did not attend school due obstacles such as access and cost. Upon returning to Syria, children often experience difficulties integrating into the education system, especially if they had previously been taught in languages other than Arabic.
The majority of returnees have been IDPs trying to make their way back to their home regions.
The majority of returnees have been IDPs trying to make their way back to their home regions. According to the IOM, 1,304,773 IDPs, approximately half of them children, have returned to their home regions since December 2024. The IOM projects that an additional 3.5 million IDPs will do the same by the end of 2025. IDPs within Syria, which has one of the largest internally displaced populations in the world, are especially vulnerable because they have been enduring the destruction of the country in situ.
Displaced Syrians are returning to extremely difficult conditions. Poverty remains extraordinarily high. According to the World Food Programme, nearly 13 million Syrians were food insecure in early 2024, with more than 3.1 million experiencing severe food insecurity. A whopping 90 percent of Syrians continue to rely on some form of humanitarian aid. According to UNICEF, at least 2 million children in Syria are out of school, including many who have never enrolled due to the war. Economic hardship also prevents students attending school if they lack the money for uniforms or books, or if they must work to support their families. Even with these absences, Syrian classrooms are nevertheless already crowded: an estimated 30 to 50 per cent of the country’s schools were destroyed, damaged, or lost during the conflict. The trauma of war is extremely harmful for children’s mental health, which affects the academic performance of those who do attend school.
A May 2025 survey by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) captured the experiences of 100 Syrians, both IDPs and those who had fled abroad, who have tried to return to their homes since the end of the war. Almost half said that their homes were destroyed, with the destruction even more widespread in rural areas. Syrians reported to the NRC a lack of basic services such medical facilities and schools in the areas to which they had returned. NRC also described a pervasive fear of unexploded ordnance. The IOM’s June 2025 analysis reported that “a significant portion” of Syrians returning to their home regions continued to live in tents, in temporary shelters made of blocks, in containers, or in damaged buildings (to which more than half of IDPs have returned).
Syria’s destroyed energy infrastructure presents another serious challenge for returnees. Both the war and US sanctions, imposed on Syria for more than 25 years and only recently lifted by the Trump administration, devasted the country’s energy sector. Today Syria can only meet 20 percent of its energy needs, and as a result faces ongoing fuel and gas shortages. Rebuilding the homes of returnees, as well as hospitals, schools, and other crucial facilities, requires a robust energy sector. The end of sanctions has allowed those Syrians with economic means to secure generators or solar panels. But the vast majority, who are impoverished, cannot afford this.
Aid and Peace Denied
Conflict has destroyed 50 percent of Syria’s physical infrastructure, an estimated loss of $123.3 billion. On top of Syria’s economic needs, the physical, psychological, and emotional tolls taken by of the war are daunting. Syria will require massive support to rebuild.
Some institutions have already demonstrated an interest in providing that help. In June 2025, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization criticized for often increasing poverty in borrower countries due to its stringent reform conditions, made its first visit to Damascus since 2009. The IMF offered recommendations for tax and public sector reform, and stated that the country will require “substantial international” aid. The European Union has allocated 202.5 million euro for humanitarian aid in 2025, and Germany has strengthened its support for the Syrian Recovery Trust Fund by 10 million euro. More notably, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have committed to financing public sector salaries and Saudi Arabia has further pledged an investment of $6.4 billion in the Syrian economy. While needed and welcomed, these financial inflows do raise questions about the extent of influence that donor countries expect to have in post-Assad Syria. The amounts pledged so far also fall short of the huge sum needed for reconstruction.
Complicating Syria’s reconstruction and recovery is the cancellation of $230 million in US aid.
A major factor complicating Syria’s reconstruction and recovery is the Trump administration’s cancellation of more than 90 percent of US foreign aid programs, including some $230 million for Syria. US funding cuts are also hobbling UN agencies such as the WPF, which requires an additional $335 million to continue feeding 1.5 million Syrians every month. As mentioned, repairing the destroyed energy sector is another crucial need. While the World Bank has provided Syria a $146 million grant to repair electric lines and transformers, much more funding is needed.
The US foreign aid cuts have also hurt work related to transitional justice and missing persons, both crucial issues in a context in which so many Syrians have had loved ones killed or disappeared during the war. Funding is needed to support government commissions and community-based initiatives to rebuild social trust. Human rights violations have continued to take place since the fall of the Assad regime. A leading Syrian organization, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, has pages upon pages of articles describing “indiscriminate killing,” unlawful detentions, and kidnappings. The sectarian violence in Syria’s coastal regions in March and April 2025, and the July clashes in al-Suwayda, are deeply concerning. On the coast, reports describe massacres of Alawi civilians in which gunmen stormed homes and killed entire families. In al-Suwayda, reports indicate violent clashes and kidnappings by both Bedouin and Druze. For the violence to stop, there needs to be both accountability for crimes committed under the Assad regime and meaningful avenues for addressing these newest violations.
On top of this internal conflict, Syria is still being attacked by Israel. Since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, Israel has attacked Syria at least 780 times. These attacks followed Israel’s illegal occupation in December 2024 of 400 square km of the demilitarized buffer zone adjacent to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israel’s violations of international law, which are financed by the United States through its funding of the Israeli military, not only violate Syria’s sovereignty but further devastate Syria’s ruined infrastructure and threaten Syrians’ lives and safety.
Promise of Return
In general, there are three main “durable solutions” for displaced people. The first such solution is local integration, in which people arrive in a new country and legalize their status. The second is resettlement, in which people are invited to resettle in another country after being recognized as needing refuge. A third solution is to return home. This solution is often the most desirable, as it affords people a chance to rebuild their lives in the place they came from, where their own language is spoken, and where they can live among family members and loved ones in a community that shares their culture and norms.
What these solutions often miss, however, is that to repatriate is to return to a place scarred by the horrors that forced people to flee. The IOM reports that between January and July 2025, there were already thousands of new internal displacements in Syria. One-third of these recent IDPs were reportedly driven from their homes as a result of deteriorating economic circumstances, one-quarter moved because the conditions of their shelter were uninhabitable, and 15 percent fled due to ongoing violence and other security concerns.
Places such as Syria that have suffered from protracted wars also have previously suffered systematic neglect and under-investment because of colonialism, racism, and authoritarianism. In such contexts, lives are not valued; other states, particularly in the West, fail to intervene to protect those lives. Adding to the challenge for returnees is ongoing violence both inside Syria and from a belligerent Israel.
Finally – and tragically – once-welcoming refugee resettlement and asylum systems in western countries, including the United States, are closing their doors to Syrians. All these factors together dim the prospects of any quick resolution to Syria’s displacement crisis.
The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
Featured image credit: Shutterstock/Mohammad Bash
