Why Syrian refugee return is driven by push, not pull

Fifteen months after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, over 1.4 million Syrian refugees have returned home — nearly triple the number who returned in the entire nine years prior. This figure has been widely announced as a milestone of a new beginning. But it obscures a more troubling story. The acceleration of returns does not reflect a sudden improvement in conditions inside Syria. It reflects a steady deteriorating conditions across the region’s main host countries, Lebanon, Türkiye, Jordan, where a decade of economic strain, shrinking international aid, and rising political pressure on refugees have made staying increasingly untenable.

This distinction matters enormously. International refugee law requires that return be voluntary, safe, dignified, and informed — conditions enshrined in the non-refoulement principle, which prohibits returning refugees to danger in any manner whatsoever. UNHCR’s own 2018 Protection Thresholds and Parameters for Refugee Return to Syria set specific benchmarks for when large-scale return can be considered safe: a functioning legal framework, a significant and durable reduction in hostilities, and evidence that refugees themselves wish to return. The evidence presented below suggests none of these have been comprehensively met.

Conditions inside Syria

Syria’s humanitarian reality remains severe. 2026 Syria Humanitarian Response Plan estimated 16.5 million people — nearly 70% of the population — require humanitarian assistance, and the country features among the FAO-WFP’s 2026 outlook for hunger hotspots. Syria’s post-conflict reconstruction costs are estimated at $216 billion. Syria’s electricity supply has improved since the regime’s fall — Damascus received an unprecedented 48 continuous hours of power in late 2025 — but the grid remains heavily rationed, and an estimated 83% of Syrians cannot afford the new electricity tariffs. While most cities under transitional government control recorded double-digit growth in grid-based electricity, Sweida and Hasakah experienced sharp declines.

Security conditions remain deeply unstable. Syria is one of the world’s most explosive ordnance-contaminated countries, with over 15.4 million people at risk of death and injury due to explosive ordnance. In January 2026, transitional government forces launched an offensive against Kurdish-held areas in Aleppo, placing over 138,000 people from Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh alone. ISIL/Da’esh remains active in central and eastern Syria, Israeli strikes continue at nearly two per day, and sectarian tensions have flared, including an attack on an Alawite mosque in Homs in December 2025.

Displacement is still being generated faster than it is being resolved. As reported by UNHCR, the country must simultaneously absorb 5.5 million internally displaced people, 1.8 million IDP returnees and 1.6 million refugee returnees. Severe winter storms and extreme cold in December 2025 and January 2026 destroyed hundreds of shelters across northern Syria, affecting an estimated 158,000 displaced people in Aleppo, Al-Hasakeh, and Idleb.

The regional security picture has deteriorated further still. On 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel started a war on Iran, triggering retaliation and drawing Lebanon and other regional actors into a rapidly escalating conflict. Within days, Syria began registering a sharp rise in arrivals from Lebanon: more than 65,000 individuals crossed into Syria. The very country held up as a destination for refugee return is now receiving new displacement flows from a region in crisis.

Housing, land, and property disputes add a further layer of precarity. Many returnees find their homes destroyed, illegally occupied, or undocumented, with no national plan to organise returns or prepare legal conditions for safe housing. Assad-era expropriation laws remain only partially addressed: Legislative Decree No. 16 of 2025 revoked some confiscation orders but falls short of comprehensive rights-based reform. UNHCR’s Enhanced Regional Survey (September 2025) found that 76% of remaining refugees do not intend to return within twelve months, citing housing, security, economic challenges, and basic services as primary concerns.

Push factors in host countries

If conditions inside Syria do not explain the scale of return, the conditions in host countries go a long way toward doing so. Many Syrians are not returning because Syria has become safer, but because host countries have become increasingly difficult — and because international support systems are collapsing.

In Lebanon, over 90% of Syrian refugees live in extreme poverty amid the country’s ongoing economic collapse. In 2023, 76% lived below the minimum expenditure basket. Political pressure for returns is intensifying. Lebanese Armed Forces summarily deported thousands of Syrians throughout 2024.

In Türkiye, over 2.8 million Syrians live under a “temporary protection” status that limits access to citizenship and formal employment. A 2024 UNHCR multi-country study found Türkiye has the highest level of anti-refugee sentiment globally, and 90% of Syrian refugees cannot fully cover basic monthly expenses. Since 2017, Human Rights Watch has documented the coercion of thousands of Syrians into signing “voluntary return” forms, with over 85,000 estimated deported in 2024 alone.

The European Union has added its own push dynamics. Within days of Assad’s fall in December 2024, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Austria suspended asylum processing for Syrians, and announced plans for “orderly repatriation and deportation”. Multiple Member States have since initiated reviews of Syrian protection status and begun revocation proceedings. ECRE has cautioned that the situation in Syria is far from meeting the requirements for revocation — changes must be fundamental, durable, and stable. In December 2025, the EU agreed on a safe countries of origin list, with political pressure from several Member States to include Syria. Meanwhile, the European Commission’s March 2025 proposal for a Common European System for Returns, combined with Frontex operational support for Syrian return operations and reduced reception conditions, creates an environment of constructive refoulement, even where returns are formally framed as voluntary.

The EU’s €2.5 billion pledge for Syria’s transition and the lifting of most economic sanctions through May 2025 are essential for recovery. But they also create a narrative of “normalisation” that can be instrumentalised to justify premature returns, even as 16.5 million Syrians remain in acute need of humanitarian support.

Feasibility is not the same as safety

The political change in Syria has generated considerable momentum. It meets what UNHCR’s own framework describes as “a fundamental change of circumstances in the country of origin”. But political change alone does not make return safe. What the evidence presented above makes clear is that international actors — states, the EU, and international organisations — have consistently conflated the feasibility of return with its safety. The two are not the same.

Return becomes feasible when a political obstacle disappears. It becomes safe only when conditions on the ground — physical security, legal protections, access to housing and services, and genuine freedom of choice — are actually in place. The urgency with which hosting states and EU institutions have moved toward return infrastructure, status revocations, and funding reorientation suggests that feasibility is being treated as sufficient. The question for European policymakers should not be “is return now possible?” but ‘are the conditions for voluntary, safe, dignified, and sustainable return genuinely in place?’ Current evidence suggests they are not.

Getting this distinction right is not only a matter of protection principles. It is a matter of preventing the normalisation of premature return as a policy default — one that exports the costs and risks of return to some of the world’s most vulnerable people, and to the countries still hosting them. At a minimum, three conditions are needed to hold the line between a policy that protects people and one that merely processes them:

i. a moratorium on Syrian protection status revocations until UNHCR’s own benchmarks are demonstrably met;

ii. ring-fenced funding for host countries, primarily Lebanon, Türkiye, and Jordan, to sustain protection conditions rather than accelerate departure;

iii. independent monitoring of return operations to distinguish genuine voluntariness from coerced compliance.

Umutcan Yüksel is a senior humanitarian professional with over 10 years of experience in migration governance and protection programming. He is currently a Policy Leader Fellow at the European University Institute.

Tineke Strik is a Member of the European Parliament for GroenLinks–PvdA (an alliance between GroenLinks and the Dutch Labour Party) and a Professor of Citizenship and Migration Law at Radboud University