Close to 1.5 million Syrian refugees have voluntarily returned to their home country over the past year.
That extraordinary figure represents nearly one-quarter of all Syrians who fled fighting during the 13-year civil war to live abroad. It is also a strikingly fast pace for a country where insecurity persists across broad regions.
The scale and speed of these returns since the overthrow of Bashar Assad’s brutal regime on Dec. 8, 2024, raise important questions: Why are so many Syrians going back, and will these returns last? Moreover, what conditions are they returning to?
As an expert in property rights and post-conflict return migration, I have monitored the massive surge in refugee returns to Syria throughout 2024. While a combination of push-and-pull factors have driven the trend, the widespread destruction of property during the brutal civil war poses an ongoing obstacle to resettlement.
By the time a rebel coalition led by Sunni Islamist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham overthrew the Assad government, Syria’s civil war had been going on for more than a decade. What began in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring protests quickly escalated into one of the most destructive conflicts of the 21st century.
Millions of Syrians were displaced internally, and about 6 million sought refuge abroad. The majority went to neighboring countries, including Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, but a little over a million sought refuge in Europe.
Now, European countries are struggling to determine how they should respond to the changed environment in Syria. Germany and Austria have put a hold on processing asylum applications from Syrians. The international legal principle of non-refoulement prohibits states from returning refugees to unsafe environments where they would face persecution and violence.
But people can choose to return home on their own. And the fall of Assad altered refugees’ perceptions of safety and possibility.
Indeed, the U.N. refugee agency surveys conducted in January 2025 across Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt found that 80% of Syrian refugees hoped to return home – up sharply from 57% the previous year. But hope and reality are not always aligned, and the factors motivating return are far more complex than the change in political authority.
