UNHCR: About 27% of Syrian refugees intend to return home in the coming months

In two months since the fall of the former regime, 270,000 Syrian refugees have returned home, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) “estimates that some 270,000 Syrians have returned to Syria since 8 December 2024,” the agency said on Friday.

The new administration in Damascus have called on Syrians outside of the country to return.

The UNHCR estimates that about 27% of Syrian refugees intend to return home in the coming months.

The refugees who have returned include some who were “registered with UNHCR and other Syrians returning from Türkiye, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt,” the refugee agency stated.

“Since 8 December, over 5,000 Syrians have returned from Iraq to Syria, including almost 400 registered refugees,” it added.

Nearly 25,500 refugees have returned from Jordan.

According to UN statistics, over 13 million Syrians forcibly left their towns and cities due to the war, while the total number of internally displaced people reached 7.2 million, and asylum seekers in different countries hit 6.5 million.

UNHCR has been carrying out regional surveys on Syrian refugees’ perceptions and intentions on return since 2017, to ensure refugee voices are at the heart of programme planning and discussions about their future. Following the recent events in Syria, UNHCR conducted a Refugee Perception and Intention Survey (RPIS) to better understand and quantify the views of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt 1 .

A total of 4,500 Syrian refugees living in those four countries were randomly selected for this survey, and 3,368 of those were successfully reached. Among those reached, 80% of respondents were focal points, who are often head of households and primary decision makers2. The findings of this report represent a regional aggregation of country survey findings. Variations between responses in each country are highlighted in the report where relevant.

Key findings of this survey included:

• Over a quarter of Syrian refugees intend to go back to rebuild their lives in the next 12 months.
• More than half of Syrian refugees who do not intend to or are undecided about return in the next 12 months intend to return in the next five years.
• The vast majority of Syrian refugees hope to return to Syria one day.
• Almost all refugees who plan to return in the next 12 months plan to return to their place of origin.
• Key barriers to return include concerns over available housing and status of refugees’ own properties, safety and security, economic challenges inside Syria and concerns about available basic services.
• Over 60% of refugees consider it important to conduct a “go and see” visit before making a final decision to return.

Basma Qaddour