UN Says One Million Syrians May Return in First Half of 2025

Date: 17 December 2024 - 22:07

News ID: ۱۳۴۷۸۳

GENEVA (Dispatches) – The United Nations said Tuesday it expects around one million people to return to Syria in the first half of 2025, following the collapse of president Bashar al-Assad’s rule.
Assad left Syria just over a week ago, as his forces abandoned tanks and other equipment in the face of a lightning offensive spearheaded by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
The developments prompted many to begin returning to their war-ravaged country.
“We have forecasted that we hope to see somewhere in the order of one million Syrians returning between January and June of next year,” Rema Jamous Imseis, the Middle East and North Africa director for the UN refugee agency UNHCR, told reporters in Geneva.
She said the recent developments had brought “a tremendous amount of hope... for the largest displacement crisis we have on planet Earth to finally be resolved”.
But she stressed that “we also have to recognize that a change doesn’t mean that there is an end to the humanitarian crisis already there”.
Pointing to “immense challenges”, she called on countries that have been hosting the millions of Syrian refugees to refrain from hastily sending them back.
“No one should be forcibly returned to Syria and that the right of Syrians to maintain access to asylum must be preserved,” Imseis said.
A number of European countries said they would freeze pending asylum requests from Syrians, while far-right parties have been pressing for the deportation of refugees back to Syria.
“What we’re saying to governments that have suspended asylum proceedings is... please continue to respect the right to access territory, to lodge an asylum claim,” Jamous Imseis said.
“People simply cannot after 14 years of displacement, pack a bag overnight and return to a country that has been devastated by conflict,” she said.
“Give us and Syrian refugees time to assess whether it’s safe to go back... It’s simply too early to see how safe it’s going to be.”
At the same time as many people are returning to Syria, Jamous Imseis pointed out that more than a million people had become newly displaced in Syria in the past three weeks, “mostly women and children”.