Operational context: refugee return figures and intentions
As of early June 2025, UNHCR estimates that 628,029 Syrians have returned to Syria since 8 December 2024, bringing the total to 988,869 Syrian individuals who have returned to the country since the beginning of 2024, primarily from Lebanon, Türkiye, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt.
Return patterns remain complex and largely shaped by individual circumstances, socio-economic pressures in host countries, and perceived improvements in security or access to property in areas of origin. However, the sustainability of these returns remains severely constrained. Many returnees face significant barriers to accessing basic services, legal documentation, and livelihood opportunities. Without urgent and sustained investment in both humanitarian assistance and reconstruction efforts, refugee returns risk becoming premature. The window to consolidate gains and prevent secondary displacement is rapidly narrowing, making immediate resource mobilization for integrated and inclusive recovery interventions critical.
Returns are primarily observed to Aleppo, Idleb, Damascus, Rural Damascus, Homs, Ar-Raqqa and Dar’a, although significant numbers of Syrian families returning to their homes are also being recorded in other governorates such as Hama and Al-Hasakeh.
Findings from the latest Return Perceptions and Intentions Survey (RPIS) conducted in February 2025 across Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt reveal a notable shift in refugee perspectives regarding return. An overwhelming 80 per cent of surveyed Syrian refugees expressed hope to return to Syria one day, marking a significant rise from 57 per cent in April 2024. Moreover, 27 per cent indicated an intention to return within the next 12 months, a substantial increase compared to just 1.7 per cent the previous year. While aspirations to return are increasing, many refugees continue to highlight conditions for return-including security, access to services, housing, and documentation,as key determinants influencing the timing and feasibility of their decision.
Priority Activities
Protection
UNHCR implements a comprehensive protection response for returnees in coordination with other UN Agencies and partners, with a focus on:
- Comprehensive protection monitoring through field missions, partner networks, and data collection tools to identify risks, barriers, and gaps in access to services.
- Community-based protection and outreach through support to community centres, mobile teams, and outreach volunteers, fostering trust, inclusion, and access to referral pathways.
- Gender-based violence (GBV) prevention and response, including awareness sessions, case management and referral to specialized services.
- Child protection services, including awareness sessions on various topics for minors and caregivers, mine risk education (MRE), remedial classes and non-formal education programmes, Homework Cafés initiatives and recreational activities.
- Mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) for all age group populations, with a special focus on vulnerable populations, such as persons with disabilities and the elderly.
- Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) through dissemination of key messages, trainings, awareness sessions and referrals.
- Legal counselling and civil documentation, including support with issuance of national IDs, birth and marriage certificates, and legal assistance on Housing, Land and Property (HLP) issues, in addition to court interventions through our legal partners.
Border Monitoring and Support
UNHCR engages in border monitoring and data collection at key border crossing points to track cross border movements, provide immediate information and referral services, and support coordinated protection-sensitive responses. This enables real-time tracking of returns, helps distinguish voluntary return from routine travel, and facilitates timely assistance for those in need. Close coordination with national authorities and humanitarian partners at entry points ensures the identification of vulnerable individuals, continuity of care, and joint planning based on accurate, context-informed data
Dignified Return and Transportation Assistance
Provision of transport assistance is a key element in ensuring dignified, safe, and voluntary return for refugees and IDPs. UNHCR, in coordination with national authorities and humanitarian partners, provides transportation grants and organized travel for vulnerable individuals, enabling them to reach their areas of return in safety and dignity. Multi-sectoral services at departure and arrival points ensure protection-sensitive assistance that responds to the specific needs of returnees. These efforts underpin a coordinated and principled return process that supports sustainable reintegration within broader recovery frameworks.
Cash Assistance
Multipurpose cash assistance is provided to vulnerable refugee returnees to help meet their immediate post arrival needs and support early reintegration. The assistance is tailored based on household profiles, vulnerability criteria, and market functionality in areas of return. Refugee returnees who were assessed as vulnerable in host countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and Türkiye, and for whom eligibility information is available to UNHCR, are a priori eligible to receive the Return and Reintegration Grant in Syria. This takes the form of a one-time cash grant of $400 per family, regardless of family size. Returnees who are not pre-identified as eligible through host country assessments will soon be able to enroll at UNHCR community centres inside Syria to be considered for assistance.
Shelter Support
While safe shelter remains, a key factor underpinning sustainable return, 14 years of conflict have left much of Syria’s housing stock damaged or destroyed, creating a major obstacle to return. According to the needs assessment conducted by the shelter and NFI sector, over 7 million people across the country are in need of shelter support (2.3 million in Aleppo, 1.5 million in Idleb, and 532,000 in Deir-ez-Zor) . The situation is compounded by complex Housing, Land and Property (HLP) challenges, including widespread loss of ownership documents due to the destruction of homes and administrative buildings.
Shelter support therefore is a critical enabler of sustainable return. Coordination with area-based actors ensures the effective targeting of the most vulnerable returnees and complementarity with other interventions. Proposed activities include shelter rehabilitation, cash-for-repair schemes, and the installation of solar streetlights to enhance community safety, particularly for women and girls.
Response Strategy for Refugee Returns
Based on actual and projected returns and triggered by calls from refugees to support them to return, UNHCR released its 2025 Operational Framework on Voluntary Return of Syrian Refugees and IDPs on 6 February 2025, marking a move into a mode of facilitating voluntary returns. The Operational Framework projects that up to 1.5 million Syrians will return in 2025, with many in need of support. Initial findings from ongoing protection monitoring show that returnees’ most pressing needs are for food, employment and shelter, indicating that people are focused on their most immediate and urgent needs and the means to meet them.
Structured around three pillars—preparatory activities, the return process, and post-return protection and reintegration—the approach encompasses legal frameworks, coordination with host country and Syrian authorities, and enhanced communication and monitoring systems, including platforms like SyriaIsHome. The return process integrates identity management, return centres, transportation support, and border services. Post-return, reintegration is supported through a conflict-sensitive, area-based response that includes legal aid and protection services, including via the extensive network of and outreach community volunteers. This is in addition to shelter rehabilitation and expanded cash and livelihoods assistance, aligned with national and inter agency frameworks to address both immediate and medium-term needs.
A new Solutions Working Group (SWG), merging the Return and Reintegration Working Group and the Lebanon Influx Working Group, will serve as a collaborative platform bringing together the government and UN agencies, international and national NGOs, development actors, and local actors to promote a coordinated, protection-sensitive, and comprehensive approach to securing durable solutions for IDPs and returning refugees, in line with international standards and humanitarian principles. The SWG will promote alignment between the humanitarian response and longer-term development strategies. As such, the SWG will serve to build and strengthen linkages between the Humanitarian Response Priorities, the Early Recovery Strategy, the Transition Action Plan and other relevant frameworks.