The demography of both Lebanon and Syria is in flux, after the fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Thousands of people are now on the move, inside the two countries and across their shared border—in both directions.

Since Syrian rebels toppled the Assad government on December 8, hundreds of thousands of people have crossed the Syrian–Lebanese border—both Syrian refugees in Lebanon returning home, and Syrians and Lebanese escaping the new Syria. For Lebanon, these new population movements also follow the massive displacement caused by Israel’s military escalation in Lebanon between September and November.

Even as the demography of both Lebanon and Syria is being remade, however, many in Lebanon have limited information about what is happening—what the actual scale of these population movements is, who is heading where, and why. In the last few years, Syrian refugees and their return to Syria have been a central preoccupation of Lebanese politics.1 Now, Lebanese decision-makers and the country’s international partners need a picture of these large population movements currently underway, and their implications for Lebanon.

This report aims to capture cross-border population movements between Lebanon and Syria since December, including both returns to Syria and new displacement from Syria to Lebanon, and to explain why people are on the move—or, in some cases, why not. It is based on fieldwork inside Lebanon, including in northern Lebanon and the country’s eastern Beqaa Valley, and on more than forty interviews with Syrian refugees, local and international humanitarian aid workers, Lebanese officials, and others.

The reality is that Assad’s fall has not occasioned the type of huge return movement that many in Lebanon hoped for. Yet many people are moving, both to and from Syria, and many more will likely move over the coming year. Lebanon should be prepared.

Difficult to Measure

Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees have returned home from Lebanon since December 8. Still, returns have fallen short of the mass exodus some in Lebanon anticipated.

Syria’s war remains among the largest displacement crises in the world. More than 7 million people are still internally displaced inside Syria, and upwards of 6 million Syrians are refugees outside the country—mostly in Syria’s regional neighbors. Lebanon hosts an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees, of a total population of 5.7 million.

Israel’s military escalation in Lebanon between September and November 2024 displaced roughly 1.5 million people, including nearly 900,000 people displaced inside Lebanon and an estimated 562,000 who fled to Syria. This latter cross-border movement from Lebanon to Syria included approximately 360,000 Syrians. After Israel and Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire on November 27, Lebanese and Syrians displaced inside Lebanon returned en masse to the country’s south and east, as did Lebanese who had fled to Syria. Many Syrians who crossed from Lebanon to Syria have also since returned to Lebanon (more on which below).

The same day Lebanon’s ceasefire went into effect, Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and allied Syrian rebels launched an offensive against the Assad government in northern Syria. After mounting some initial resistance, Syrian military forces collapsed. Syrian opposition militants swiftly advanced from both the country’s north and south, converging on Damascus, the capital. On December 8, Assad fled to Russia. Syria’s opposition seized Damascus and political control.

In the ensuing weeks, Lebanese political leaders called for Syrian refugees in Lebanon to return home and contended that, with Assad gone, these Syrians’ reasons for seeking refuge in Lebanon had become moot.

But while Syrian refugees have returned from Lebanon in sizable numbers the flow has been far from overwhelming. UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, estimated that as of March 14, 354,900 Syrians had returned to Syria from or via neighboring countries since Assad’s fall.2 On March 17, Turkey’s vice president said that more than 145,000 Syrians had returned from Turkey since December. More than 46,000 refugees registered in Jordan have returned, in addition to thousands more Syrians who have transited Jordan en route to Syria. But it isn’t clear how many of the more than 350,000 total returnees have come from Lebanon. Lebanese authorities have not officially announced the number of Syrian returnees from Lebanon since providing early estimates in December. 

Returns from Lebanon are difficult to quantify because of the large volume of irregular movement across Lebanon’s long, relatively porous border with Syria.

Lebanese authorities may be reluctant to publicize returns estimates that fall short of the Lebanese public’s expectations. Returns from Lebanon are additionally difficult to quantify because of the large volume of irregular movement across Lebanon’s long, relatively porous border with Syria. Importantly, traffic along the many informal routes across the Lebanese–Syrian border runs in both directions. It includes Syrians who want to cross from Lebanon into Syria without officially registering that movement, and thus risking their refugee status and inviting a multi-year ban on re-entry to Lebanon. Yet this cross-border traffic also includes Syrians crossing back into Lebanon after briefly visiting Syria, or coming for the first time to Lebanon seeking work.

Many Syrians in Lebanon have apparently crossed irregularly into Syria since December for brief visits to reconnect with family, check on their property, and get a general sense of the country’s post-Assad atmosphere, before returning to Lebanon.3 Such visits add additional uncertainty about which movements from Lebanon to Syria can be properly considered “returns,” and which have instead been “pendular” movements, in the parlance of humanitarian organizations.4 The number of actual returns may only become apparent with time, as it becomes clearer which Syrians have permanently left Lebanon and as UNHCR deregisters Syrians who are outside Lebanon and unreachable.

UNHCR is now actively checking which Syrian refugees remain in Lebanon and, as of March 20, has removed 70,000 Syrians from its rolls.5 This number includes not only Syrians who returned home after the fall of Assad, but also Syrians who crossed from Lebanon into Syria during Israel’s late 2024 escalation and then remained in Syria.

Some large portion of those Syrians who crossed into Syria during the war with Israel have also returned to Lebanon, although, again, there are no official numbers for how many. Much of this cross-border traffic—in both directions—moved through irregular routes. It comes as little surprise that many of these Syrians returned to Lebanon, particularly after they encountered the challenging living conditions in Syria. When these Syrians crossed into Syria, they were not making a considered, voluntary choice to return. They overwhelmingly came from areas in Lebanon subjected to Israel’s most intense bombing, and many crossed into Syria after being barred from collective shelters in Lebanon that were reserved almost exclusively for displaced Lebanese.

In parallel, tens of thousands of both Syrians and Lebanese have, since the fall of Assad, fled Syria for Lebanon. These include roughly 90,000 people who crossed into Lebanon’s northeastern Baalbek-Hermel governorate immediately after Assad’s fall. These new arrivals are primarily Syrian, but also include roughly 20,000 Lebanese residents of border villages inside Syrian territory but traditionally inhabited by Lebanese citizens.6 As of March 17, more than 15,000 Syrians had also fled to Lebanon’s North and Akkar governorates, escaping violence against Alawites in Syria’s coastal and central regions.7

Lastly, people are on the move inside Syria—although, again, in numbers smaller than one might expect. In February, the UN reported that almost 900,000 internally displaced Syrians had returned to their areas of origin since November 27, the start of Syrian rebels’ offensive. Yet two-thirds of those returnees had been newly displaced during that offensive; only 280,000 had been displaced earlier. Hundreds of thousands of those people displaced in November and December have yet to return home. Fewer than 200,000 of the 2.1 million people in northwest Syria’s displacement camps have returned home since December. 

While returns to Syria have so far been limited, though, refugees have signaled that they want and intend to go back in larger numbers. The latest edition of UNHCR’s annual Refugee Perceptions and Intentions Survey, conducted in January 2025, indicated that, post-Assad, many more Syrian refugees in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq either intend to return to Syria or are considering return.8 Some 27 percent of refugees surveyed said they intend to return in the next year, up from roughly 2 percent in April 2024. A further 18 percent said they were undecided about returning in the coming year. Some 80 percent of respondents said they hope to return one day, up from 57 percent the previous April.

In Lebanon specifically, 24 percent—more 350,000 people—said they intend to return to Syria in the next year. Of those Syrians in Lebanon who said they did not plan to go back this year, 56 percent said they intend to return in the next five years.

Humanitarians expect returns to increase in the spring and summer, after the end of winter, the month of Ramadan and the school year.9 Some refugees are now saving money to cover the costs of return, both in Lebanon and in other host countries.10

Caption: Refugees displaced to Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley by the Syrian conflict at an informal tented settlement in a June 12, 2019 file photo. Source: Victoria Jones—WPA Pool/Getty Images

What Keeps Syrians from Going Back

So why haven’t more Syrian refugees returned since the fall of Assad in December? The reality is that, even post-Assad, conditions inside Syria remain extremely difficult.

Syrian refugees whom the author met in informal tented settlements in Lebanon’s northern Akkar governorate and the Beqaa Valley said they wanted to go back to Syria and that, after December 8, they were again considering return. “God willing, I want to wake up one day and Lebanon won’t have one tent in it,” said a middle-aged man from the Syrian governorate of Raqqa.11 Yet they also expressed well-founded misgivings about conditions inside Syria, and about what they would require to reestablish themselves in their home country.

Syrian refugees’ circumstances are diverse, as are their individual considerations and concerns regarding return to Syria. The Syrians with whom the author spoke in Akkar and the Beqaa represent just one part of the Syrian refugee experience; their perspectives will necessarily differ from the majority of Syrians in Lebanon who live in urban areas, or from Syrian refugees in other countries.12 Yet they are also some of the refugees one might expect to be least rooted in Lebanon and, given this dramatic change in Syria, most ready to return. Their reservations about return, then, are worth taking seriously, and seem indicative of concerns shared by a broader swathe of Syrian refugees.

Prior to the fall of Assad, UNHCR head Filippo Grandi advanced a useful framing of the obstacles to Syria returns, dividing them into two categories: protection concerns, including refugees’ security fears and any legal challenges they face; and more material issues, including access to shelter, essential services and livelihoods.13

Before December 8, refugees’ concerns about safety and security had taken priority. The UNHCR return intentions survey from January—supported by the author’s interviews—suggests that those safety worries have receded in importance, in favor of more material and practical considerations. Still, safety-related issues remain important, even if they are no longer the main factor weighing on refugees’ decision-making.

Safety Fears

Some of Syrian refugees’ prior safety concerns have now been resolved. Critically, returnees no longer need to fear detention and disappearance at the hands of Assad’s security services, or open-ended conscription into the Syrian military. “Before you’d have to sneak back [into the country], or die,” said a man from rural Homs governorate.14 “People would return and die; they would disappear.” Syrian refugees who had visited Syria since December or who knew people who had returned reported positive initial impressions of the country’s new authorities. A young man from Homs who had briefly visited Syria said that people used to fear Syrian security personnel, but now “all the soldiers greet you—you feel like you’re in your own country.” There’s a sense of “respect” and “appreciation,” said the young man’s friend.15

Yet Syria is not fully safe, even now. In many parts of Syria, the country’s more-than-decade-long civil war has not yet ended. Notably, the fate of Syria’s northeast remains in question; the region is still controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, against which Turkey has threatened military intervention. The fall of Assad in western and southern Syria is limited consolation for Syrians from the northeast who oppose the SDF, or who fear SDF conscription. “Ninety percent of us here [in this camp] are from [SDF-controlled governorates] Raqqa, al-Hasakeh, and Deir al-Zour,” said a man from Raqqa. “We watched the [Assad] regime fall, but for us, nothing changed; in our areas, the regime is the same.”16

And instability and violence has persisted elsewhere. Syria’s new security forces have battled purported “remnants of the former regime” in the country’s central and coastal regions. In March, those clashes spiralled into mass killings of Alawite Syrian civilians. Israel has seized new territory in Syria’s southwest, in addition to carrying out airstrikes across the country. Widespread contamination by landmines and unexploded ordnance is a problem nationwide, something that both endangers civilians—hundreds of Syrians have died in explosions since December—and prevents people from returning to agricultural livelihoods and supporting themselves.17

Lebanon may not be a particularly friendly or comfortable place for Syrians, but for many, it is safer and more stable than their country. “A lot of people think Syria is paradise, after its liberation,” said a woman who had returned home to rural Dera’a governorate in Syria for medical treatment shortly before the fall of Assad. The area was awash in small arms, she said, and when disputes arose, locals would immediately resort to violence. “Here is better,” she said. “There’s no chaos, like there. There’s safety. Sometimes there’s work, and sometimes the UN helps. If you have the UN, and some work here and there, you’re okay. But the important thing is safety.”18

And Syria’s future is uncertain. There is no settled political order in Syria today, and no guarantee that its political transition will end successfully. It is unclear whether the new Syrian military will manage to impose control over the country’s many armed factions. The situation in the country is “jumbled,” a woman from the city of Homs told the author.19 It seems entirely reasonable for Syrian refugees to be apprehensive about what’s next in Syria, and to fear that things could take a turn for the worse.

Material Challenges

The more practical obstacles to the return of Syrian refugees—including the lack of housing, livelihoods and public services—are also daunting. After nearly fourteen years of war, Syria is a wreck. Nine out of ten Syrians now live in poverty and face food insecurity, and three-quarters of the country now depends on humanitarian assistance.20 Many refugees do not see a way to support themselves and their families back in Syria.

“You need the fundamentals of life,” said a man from the Homs countryside. “Are you going to live in a home that’s rubble? And what if you can’t support yourself, if the area is destroyed?”21

Many refugees’ homes in Syria are ruined. Another man from rural Homs said he had gone back to Syria for a month after December 8: “Everything was destroyed. There wasn’t a wall higher than this,” he said, gesturing to knee height.22 “Scenes of returnees, including refugee returnees, living in tents because their houses are not habitable are not uncommon,” said UNHCR representative in Syria Gonzalo Vargas Llosa.23 Many refugees’ homes have been comprehensively stripped and looted. Property rights are also complicated; some homes have been occupied by others during the war, and there is presently no clear legal mechanism for adjudicating disputes.

“You need the fundamentals of life,” said a man from the Homs countryside. “Are you going to live in a home that’s rubble? And what if you can’t support yourself, if the area is destroyed?”

Syria’s public infrastructure has also been degraded, and services such as electricity, water, education and health care are only minimally available. Large parts of the country receive only two to three hours of grid electricity a day—something necessary not just for daily life, but also for the delivery of other essential services. Nonfunctioning water systems, meanwhile, not only endanger public health but also impair farm irrigation. A man from an agricultural area in the southern Aleppo countryside said he was in touch with his sister there. “There’s no water,” he said. “If there’s no water, there aren’t even weeds, like these,” as he pointed to nearby scrub brush.24 And refugees may be returning to areas lacking working medical facilities and schools. “At least here, I’ve got my oxygen tank,” said a man from Homs, seated in his tent next to his respirator. “In Syria, where am I supposed to get one?”25 Refugees and internally displaced people who have gone home have already strained local resources and services in their areas of return.26

Returnees also have limited prospects for paying work, and they may have lost what productive assets they previously owned. A man from the Homs countryside said he had a farm in Syria, but today the trees are cut and burned, his wells are blocked, his irrigation pumps are destroyed, there is no electricity, and his land is riddled with mines. “If you don’t work, you don’t eat,” he said.27 Necessities such as fuel are scarce and, for Syrians making local wages, untenably expensive. Many Syrians depend on remittances from family abroad. “Every single returnee we speak with has come back with basically no resources, or very little resources,” said Vargas Llosa of UNHCR. “Getting by every day is a real challenge, and, so far, livelihood opportunities are extremely rare.”28

Even if Syrian refugees are not living comfortably in Lebanon, many have at least achieved a sort of equilibrium. They manage to get by, thanks to a combination of UN assistance—including cash assistance of up to $145 per family, support for health care and education, and some in-kind assistance—and day wages that can range between $4 and $10 a day for farmwork and construction.29 Wages in Syria just can’t compare to those in Lebanon, a humanitarian told the author—and that’s if people in Syria can find work. “The truth is that, compared to Syria, Lebanon is an economic powerhouse,” he said.30 Many Syrians have been in Lebanon for more than a decade; they have built a life for themselves, and to some extent locally integrated.

Humanitarian assistance for Syrians in Lebanon is now decreasing because of funding cuts, including the Trump administration’s dramatic halt to most U.S. foreign aid. Yet there is no evidence that these aid reductions will lead Syrian refugees to return, particularly when an already under-resourced humanitarian response in Syria is also facing the same cutbacks.

Return to Syria is a major undertaking, and a substantial expense. Syrians who spoke to the author estimated that repairing or rebuilding their homes would cost thousands of dollars. Even just renting a truck to transport their possessions back home would cost them between $200 and $500. Some of them also have debts in Lebanon that they would need to settle before returning to Syria; one woman from Aleppo, for example, said her family had borrowed $2,000 to pay for her medical treatment when her mother-in-law fell ill.31

For Syrians in Lebanon, returning to Syria can also be a huge risk. Refugees worry about going back to Syria and being unable to find work or afford rent. “If you go back and, four or five months in, there’s still no state, you’ll die of starvation,” said a man from Homs.32 And return may be a one-way trip. Registered refugees whose departures are recorded by Lebanese authorities are not allowed to reenter Lebanon; if refugees regret returning to Syria and want to come back, they may have to pay smugglers to cross illegally.33 Syrian refugees in the Beqaa Valley said that residents of tented settlements who want to return to Syria are obliged to dismantle their tents and then, if they come back to Lebanon, prohibited from returning to the camp. They said that former neighbors who returned to Lebanon from Syria were forced to rent housing in nearby towns, where rent can cost ten times as much as in their camp.34

Some Refugees Returning—Some Not

Some Syrian refugees have returned from Lebanon despite the challenges awaiting them in Syria. For now, though, many more seem to be taking a wait-and-see approach.

In January, the Union of Relief and Development Organizations, or URDA, a Lebanese NGO, organized the voluntary return of Syrian refugees to the Homs countryside from a camp the organization has supported in northern Lebanon. These new returnees “didn’t expect this day would come,” said Fatima Kaisi of URDA. Many of those returnees were now living in tents erected alongside their damaged homes, she said, or with relatives. “But at least they’re in their homeland,” said Kaisi. “They’re not ‘refugees.’ They’re Syrian citizens. So they felt a sense of dignity.” Kaisi said URDA was working to rehabilitate public services in these people’s area of return, and to provide other in-kind assistance to help them weather the winter.

“The children didn’t know what to expect,” Kaisi said. “They knew Syria is their ‘homeland,’ but nothing else. They were born in [Lebanon’s] camps.”35

Other Syrians, though, are staying in Lebanon—at least for now. From Lebanon, these refugees are talking to friends and family who are still in Syria or who have returned to the country, and listening to what they report back. A Homs man, for example, said his brother returned from northern Syria to their home area and sent video to his brother in Lebanon. “We didn’t recognize our own villages,” the man said. “It was just rubble.”36 Syrian refugees who spoke to the author said they believed Syria will need years, not weeks or months, to get back on its feet. “It’s not time to go back to Syria,” said one woman. “If the situation isn’t right, like it was before, then we won’t go back. And it’s still not.”37 Limited numbers of people have returned from displacement camps inside Syria to their areas of origin since December, for reasons that are apparently similar to those of refugees outside the country. 

Some refugee families in Lebanon have reportedly split, either sending men back to Syria to prepare for the whole family’s return or sending women and children back to Syria while men remain in Syria to work and remit their earnings.38

If more women and children return from Lebanon to Syria, then migration patterns between the two countries may begin to resemble the status quo prior to Syria’s war, when hundreds of thousands of Syrians would come to work in Lebanon seasonally and send money back to family in Syria. In Akkar, an older Aleppo man who had been living as a refugee in Lebanon for the last twelve years said he had also been coming to Lebanon for work since he was seventeen years old.39 One refugee settlement the author visited in the Beqaa had apparently grown out of a migrant labor camp that predated Syria’s war; residents of the same Homs region, when they fled insecurity in Syria, gravitated to this settlement where their relatives were already living and working.40

“The children didn’t know what to expect,” Kaisi said. “They knew Syria is their ‘homeland,’ but nothing else. They were born in Lebanon’s camps.”

Ahmed al-Sharaa, the new Syrian president, reportedly told UNHCR head Filippo Grandi that Syria welcomed refugees’ return—but at a more gradual, deliberate pace, not all at once. A large new influx of returns, after all, could overload public services and lead to social tensions. Returns since September 2024 have already tested Syria’s limited absorptive capacity. Grandi, for his part, has stressed that conditions need to be in place for returns to be “sustainable.” Otherwise, there is a risk that returnees will be forced to move again—either inside Syria, back to neighboring countries like Lebanon, or onward toward third countries.

Vargas Llosa of UNHCR emphasized that there is currently a “window of opportunity” in which international donors need to provide support, if returnees are going to settle again in Syria. Syrians who have come back “want to give return a chance,” he said. “This is our clear analysis from our daily conversations, particularly with those who came back since December 8. They came back because they wanted to come back, as opposed to coming back because they were pushed by bombing in Lebanon. . . . They’re willing to give this a chance. But for how long will they give it a chance, if they don’t see some improvement, or some hope there will be some improvement soon?”41

In the meantime, many refugees in Lebanon may still try to migrate to third countries—irregularly, if necessary—to secure a better life for themselves and their families. A group of young men from Homs told the author they would all rather go to Europe than back to Syria.42 One told the author his brother was currently en route, and was waiting to reattempt the crossing from Libya to Italy. “Sometimes, you risk your life for your future,” he said. “It’s a matter of life and death.”43

New Arrivals to Hermel

Even as thousands of refugees have returned to Syria from Lebanon since December 8, thousands more Syrians have, in parallel, fled to Lebanon. The first wave of new displacement to Lebanon took place in December; of this wave, the largest and most easily quantifiable population of new arrivals settled in Lebanon’s northeastern Baalbek-Hermel governorate.

On December 9, basically overnight, nearly 90,000 people entered Baalbek-Hermel’s northernmost Hermel district through unofficial crossing points from Syria’s Homs governorate.44 After a chaotic initial reception—in which new arrivals were sleeping in cars and in the streets—relief organizations and local authorities repurposed coordination structures employed during Israel’s military escalation in previous months and scaled up a new emergency response.45 Today, the Lebanese citizens who fled to Hermel from Syria are principally staying in area families’ homes. Most Syrians are hosted by families or renting in local communities, although more than 30,000 are housed in nearly 200 informal collective shelters46—principally Shia mosques and multipurpose religious halls called husseiniyyat.47 Local authorities have progressively distributed new arrivals from Hermel district to areas with additional capacity across the broader governorate, although newly displaced people remain primarily concentrated in Hermel.48 While many newly arrived Lebanese have family in the area, Syrians who came in December generally do not.49

Humanitarians told the author that these newly arrived Syrians are largely, but not entirely, Shia Muslims. Many come from Homs, as well as areas on the Syrian coast, Aleppo, and Damascus.50 New arrivals have told humanitarians that they fled to Lebanon because they feared the country’s new authorities, because they received direct threats, or because violence—torching houses, for example—was drawing closer to their homes.51 Many are at risk because of some perceived affiliation with the Assad government; some may also have been linked with Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Many of these newly arrived Syrians lack official documents and therefore cannot easily navigate Lebanese army checkpoints to move around the area or leave Baalbek-Hermel for other parts of the country.52 Yet they may also be hewing to these Shia-majority areas because they fear an unfriendly reception elsewhere, including among more longtime Syrian refugees in Lebanon who regard these new arrivals as pro-Assad.53

Local communities in Baalbek-Hermel have so far accommodated these new arrivals, and there is little apparent pressure for them to return to Syria in the near term.54 There may be limits, though, to how long area residents can support the newly displaced. NGOs are providing some assistance, in partnership with UN agencies.55 Religious charities are also providing some aid.56 Yet even with this support, local Lebanese likely cannot host displaced families forever; these communities are themselves recovering from Lebanon’s recent war with Israel, during which Israel extensively bombed Baalbek-Hermel.57 This new population influx will also put additional pressure on local infrastructure and services, including sewage, garbage collection, and schools.58 Thousands of displaced people who have been uprooted from their homes and livelihoods will also need jobs.59

It is unclear when these newly arrived Syrians will be able to safely return to their country. Violence continues in neighboring areas of Syria, and, in February, Syrian forces clashed with Lebanese clans they alleged were linked to “the Hezbollah militia” in the border area nearby. Those border hostilities resumed in March. Realistically, Syria’s new authorities may not be willing to extend protection under the law to this population. The country’s new leaders are vocally antagonistic to Iran and Hezbollah, and since December they have signaled antipathy to Shia Muslims generally.

Caption: Ahmed Muhammad al-Nawa hugs his mother, Umm Marwan, after returning home from Lebanon to his family’s home in the village of Harran, Syria for the first time in ten years, on December 21, 2024. Ahmed, 36, was imprisoned and tortured in 2012–13 by the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Later, he fled with his family to Lebanon, where they lived in a tent in the Hosh al-Hareem camp for ten years. Source: Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

More Syrians in the First Wave

In addition to the large, identifiable population in Baalbek-Hermel, other Syrians also fled to Lebanon in that initial December wave. Less is known about these other displaced Syrians, including how many arrived and where they settled in Lebanon.

Ordinarily, UNHCR registration of these new arrivals would help map this population. But UNHCR has not had official permission to register new refugees in Lebanon since 2015, when the Lebanese government ordered it to stop.

In the first days after Assad’s fall, thousands of Syrians were reportedly allowed to enter Lebanon through the two countries’ main official border crossing. Some of these incoming Syrians were senior government officials and other Assad associates, who may have since departed Lebanon. Others, though, were ordinary Syrians who feared revenge attacks or persecution by Islamist militants.

Aid workers said colleagues had seen small numbers of new families appear in various parts of Lebanon.60 Like Syrians who crossed into Hermel, these new arrivals elsewhere in Lebanon seem to have fled Syria because they had some perceived affiliation with the Assad government, personally received threats, or just feared the situation in their area would become more dangerous.61

A Hama man told the author he had fled to Lebanon in December after being threatened over what he said was “a personal grudge.” He was a traffic cop, he said, and had previously served in the army. “People say, ‘You were this, you were that,’” he said. “There are a lot of innocent people who have been lost.”62

Some Syrians had already left Syria’s coast, even before the mid-March violence in that region that sent thousands more people fleeing into Lebanon: On March 6—on the eve of the coastal massacres—Noureddine Eid, head of Lebanon’s Alawite Islamic Charity Association, told the author his organization had connected with more than 4,000 Syrians who had arrived in Lebanon since December.63 The Syrians whom his organization had reached were regular people, he said; Syria’s moneyed elites had gone to Beirut, or traveled onward from Lebanon to third countries.64 Abdulhamid Saqr, head of the Talbirah municipality in Akkar, said his town was hosting 70 families (roughly 350 people) before the March attacks.65

Many of the Syrians who came to Lebanon in December likely preferred to keep a low profile. Alawite Syrians, for example, may have worried about attracting attention from neighboring Lebanese communities or other Syrian refugees who would regard them as Assad-affiliated and meet them with hostility.66

And new movements from Syria to Lebanon did not end with that initial December wave. Syrians have continued to arrive for more prosaic reasons—avoiding SDF conscription in northeastern Syria, for example, or migrating to Lebanon for work—and they have also come to Lebanon fleeing persecution and violence.  

The Second Wave: Escaping the Syrian Coast

In March, sectarian massacres in Syria’s coastal and central regions sent thousands of Alawite Syrians fleeing into Lebanon. This new movement of Syrians to northern Lebanon marks the second large wave of displacement to Lebanon since December.

As of March 17, more than 15,000 Syrians have crossed into northern Lebanon fleeing anti-Alawite violence. When the author visited Akkar and Tripoli’s Alawite-majority Jabal Mohsen neighborhood on March 13 and 14, local authorities were registering new Syrian arrivals, and more Syrians were apparently crossing each day. As of this writing, the number of newly displaced Syrians in northern Lebanon continues to increase. 

These Syrians have fled the mass violence targeting Syrian Alawites. On March 6, militants opposed to Syria’s new government carried out seemingly coordinated attacks against Syria’s new security services in the country’s coastal areas. In response, many thousands of government and pro-government forces across the country mobilized to the Syrian coast to put down these “regime remnants.” Both official government forces and autonomous pro-government groups evidently carried out large-scale abuses against Alawite civilians in coastal and central areas, including summary executions, beatings, humiliating treatment and extensive looting.67 Pro-government militants broadcast many of these violations online. The full civilian death toll is so far unknown but is surely, at minimum, in the hundreds; in just one Alawite town, a CNN team counted more than eighty dead.68

An older man said he had hiked through the woods for days to reach the border. “I’m not a ‘remnant,’” he said. “I got out of the army thirty years ago.”

The author met Syrians who had fled this violence in the Akkar town of Talbirah and in Jabal Mohsen. They were huddled in a local municipal hall and an open building that had both been repurposed as collective shelters. Most had crossed into Lebanon by fording the al-Kabir River, which demarcates much of Lebanon’s northern border with Syria. Some said they had arrived just a day earlier.

These Syrians said they had seen family members and neighbors killed, and bodies littering the streets. They also described being beaten and humiliated by pro-government militants; several showed the author bruises where they said fighters had struck them.69 A number said they had survived by fleeing from one locale to the next, or by hiding in the bush and trekking for days to the border.70 Three said they had witnessed Syrian militants fire on civilians as they attempted to cross the river into Lebanon.71 In addition to what they had witnessed firsthand, these people were agitated over atrocity videos and reports of violence they had seen shared on social media—some apparently real, others likely fabricated or apocryphal.

An older man said he had hiked through the woods for days to reach the border. “I’m not a ‘remnant,’” he said. “I got out of the army thirty years ago.” He pointed to a nearby child. “Am I, or is he, a ‘regime remnant’?”72

This latest mass violence followed months of intimidation, harassment and lower-level abuses73 targeting Alawite communities.74 New arrivals told the author that even before these killings, they had already felt destabilized by mass layoffs in Syria’s public sector, which they saw as purges of Alawites; the cutoff of state salaries, pensions and other benefits; and the sudden, inexplicable collapse of the Syrian military and Assad government in December. “We just woke up to all this,” said one man.75

Unlikely to Return Soon

These Syrians had just gone through a truly harrowing experience; they were clearly traumatized, and not fully able to discuss their intentions or future plans. Still, it is difficult to imagine them returning home to Syria in the near term.

Syria’s new government has taken some steps to reassure Alawite Syrians. President Sharaa and other senior officials have promised they will hold accountable anyone who committed violations against civilians. Sharaa has additionally announced a committee to maintain civil peace on the coast, and officials have publicized their outreach to Alawite communities.76

Yet these new refugees seemed unlikely to trust these measures by Sharaa’s government. They said they had cooperated after the fall of Assad, appearing before the country’s new security services to “regularize their status” and surrender any firearms; two showed laminated “defection cards” that security personnel had given them.77 They said, though, that handing in their arms had only left them vulnerable when militants attacked. And when new authorities announced a curfew on March 6—after the initial anti-government insurgent attacks—that meant they just were waiting at home when pro-government partisans arrived and, moving from house to house, abused, and killed captive residents. A number of Syrians who spoke to the author emphasized that Sharaa and his former rebel faction Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (which was officially disbanded at the end of January) are “terrorists.”78

These Syrians said they felt betrayed not only by Syria’s new authorities, but also by their Sunni neighbors, who they said had turned on them. This included Sunnis who had been displaced to coastal areas during Syria’s civil war, whom these Alawite Syrians said they had lived alongside and protected.79 Two said longtime Sunni friends had called them “pigs” and threatened to kill them.80 It is not clear how these newly displaced people will feel safe again in Syria, if they believe their fellow citizens were ready to participate in their extermination. “It’s very hard for us to go back, as Alawites, and live there with this type of thinking,” said one man.81

Humanitarians said that, as the situation in Syria stabilized and it became easier to reach the border, even more Syrians could flee to Lebanon.82 Newly arrived Syrians told the author that their family members still inside Syria were locked in their homes, running down their supplies of food but too afraid to step outside. And many Syrians who are in poor health or have been injured cannot navigate difficult smuggling routes to make the crossing now, a humanitarian said. “As soon as things calm down, the numbers [of new arrivals] may increase, not decrease.”83

Newly arrived Syrians asked the author not to take any pictures or video. They were afraid of retaliation against their families.

In the meantime, these newly arrived Syrians are extremely vulnerable. Many escaped with almost no possessions. Some had no identifying documents, or had lost them en route. Most are now being hosted by local families or housed in municipal halls and other open spaces that have been converted into ad hoc shelters but that lack basic facilities or even minimal privacy.

Lebanese Alawite communities in Akkar’s Alawite villages and in Tripoli’s Jabal Mohsen have taken in most of these newly displaced Syrians. When the author visited northern Lebanon in March, internationally supported humanitarian efforts were ramping up. Still, it was local residents, municipal authorities and relief organizations that were handling most of the aid response. “Nobody in the Alawite sect in Lebanon doesn’t have someone who was killed in Syria,” Eid said.84

With time, though, accommodating these new arrivals is likely to become a major challenge for these communities. As with Syrians displaced to Hermel, these new refugees are hewing to areas they believe are welcoming and safe. Yet Alawites are only a small minority in Lebanon, and Alawite areas in Akkar and Tripoli are mostly poor. If more Syrian Alawites flee to Lebanon, they may further concentrate in a handful of areas that have extremely limited means. Saqr, the Talbirah municipality head, said he was making calls to secure international support, but in the meantime most assistance had been donated by townspeople. “The municipality isn’t able to afford this,” he said. “These people came with just their clothes.”85

Managing social tensions will also be complicated. These newly arrived Syrians are unlikely to mix with more long-time Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Any visible assistance to these new arrivals, meanwhile, could provoke resentment among other Syrian refugees for whom humanitarian aid is currently being reduced. This new influx of Syrian Alawites could also exacerbate intra-Lebanese social tensions, including between Tripoli’s Jabal Mohsen and surrounding Sunni-majority areas. Threats to Jabal Mohsen circulated online in March;86 when the author visited the neighborhood, locals said the Lebanese army had deployed additional forces to the area to maintain calm. Newly arrived Syrians and locals helping to host them both asked the author not to take any pictures or video. Syrians said they were afraid of retaliation against their families still inside Syria, and one Lebanese man was evidently concerned about inflaming sectarian tensions in Lebanon.

Readiness in Lebanon

Further demographic churn will continue to roil Lebanon—with the attendant strain on Lebanon’s national infrastructure and resources—as Syrians move in both directions across the Lebanese-Syrian border.

Realistically, Lebanon has limited policy means to encourage returns. It is conditions inside Syria that will likely be dispositive, and what happens in Syria will primarily be determined by Syrians, as they negotiate their political transition and reconcile the intra-Syrian tensions that have accumulated over decades of dictatorship and civil conflict. Yet foreign donor countries must also play an important role in stabilizing humanitarian and economic conditions in Syria, with additional aid, sanctions relief, and support for reconstruction. Lebanese leaders, for their part, can lend support to UNHCR and other organizations presently advocating to donor countries for the type of assistance that will enable returns. UNHCR has announced a new operational framework for Syria, in which it is prepared to facilitate refugees’ voluntary return.87 But the agency can only offer assistance like return transportation, cash, and support for shelter repairs if donor countries provide the organization with needed resources.

Refugees are returning now, and Syria needs international support if those returns are going to be sustainable. “What’s important to understand is that the return is well underway,” said UNHCR representative Vargas Llosa. “It’s not an idea of the future; it’s something that is already well underway.”

The “window of opportunity” to support returns “won’t be open forever,” Vargas Llosa said. “Something needs to start moving on the investment side very quickly, because economic conditions are really, truly appalling. And the return of refugees and IDPs is putting even more pressure on communities of return.”88

And there are some steps that Lebanese authorities could take to better enable returns. They could permit “go-and-see” visits by Syrian refugees—something Lebanese authorities and UNHCR are already discussing—in which refugees can travel to Syria and then return to Lebanon, in order to assess conditions in their home areas and plan for return in future.89 Lebanon could also end any fees imposed on returnees at the border, and stop issuing reentry bans for Syrian returnees who may want to travel normally to Lebanon in the future. Lebanon could also ask UNHCR to carry out the new registration of refugees, which will allow both relief actors and Lebanese authorities to better understand any new arrivals’ profiles and needs.

And Lebanon could use that type of information now, to better grasp these new movements across its border with Syria. The Assad government is gone, and with it some of the more long-standing institutional links between Lebanese and Syrian state institutions that gave Lebanon more visibility on border traffic. Now, things are dramatically changing in both countries, and events in Syria—including the latest violence on the Syrian coast—could lead to migration flows that are even more dynamic and intense.

This report is part of “Bridging the Gap on Syrian Refugee Return,” a Century International project supported by the Kingdom of Norway.

Header Image Caption: Lana, 13, who was born in Syria, and her brother Muhammad, 6, who was born in Lebanon wait in a truck carrying the family’s possessions as their father Ahmed Muhammad Al-Nawa prepares papers to cross the border from Lebanon to Syria to return to his family’s home in the village of Harran for the first time in ten years on December 21. Source: Chris McGrath/Getty Images

Notes

  1. Sam Heller, “Assad Is Gone, but for Refugees to Return, the World Needs to Invest in Syria’s Peace,” The Century Foundation, February 3, 2025, https://tcf.org/content/commentary/assad-is-gone-but-for-refugees-to-return-the-world-needs-to-invest-in-syrias-peace/.
  2. “Regional Flash Update #18: Syria Situation Crisis” UNHCR, March 14, 2025, https://reporting.unhcr.org/syria-situation-crisis-regional-flash-update-18.
  3. Humanitarians, interviews with the author, Beirut, Tripoli, and remotely, January and February 2025.
  4. “Lebanon Update: February-March 2025,” UNHCR, March 19, 2025, https://reliefweb.int/report/lebanon/unhcr-lebanon-flash-update-february-march-2025.
  5. Ivo Freijsen, UNHCR representative, interview with the author remotely, March 20, 2025.
  6. Hermel mayoralty, interview with the author, Hermel, January 2025.
  7. “New Arrivals to North Lebanon,” UNHCR, March 17, 2025, https://reporting.unhcr.org/lebanon-flash-update-new-arrivals-syria-10615.
  8. “Flash Regional Survey on Syrian Refugees’ Perceptions and Intentions on Return to Syria,” UNHCR, February 6, 2025, https://data.unhcr.org/en/documents/details/114221.
  9. Interviews with the author, Khalde, Tripoli and remotely, January 2025.
  10. Humanitarian, interview with the author remotely, January 2025. See also Walid Al Nofal, “Zaatari Camp’s Economy Collapses with the Fall of the Assad Regime,” Syria Direct, January 7, 2025, https://syriadirect.org/zaatari-camps-economy-collapses-with-the-fall-of-assad-regime/.
  11. Interview with the author, Akkar, January 2025.
  12. “VaSYR: Vulnerability Assessment of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon,” UNHCR, June 10, 2024, https://reliefweb.int/report/lebanon/vasyr-2023-vulnerability-assessment-syrian-refugees-lebanon.
  13. “High Commissioner’s statement at the Brussels Syria Conference,” UNHCR, May 27, 2024, https://www.unhcr.org/news/speeches-and-statements/high-commissioner-s-statement-brussels-syria-conference.
  14. Interview with the author, Beqaa Valley, January 2025.
  15. Interview with the author, Beqaa Valley, January 2025.
  16. Interview with the author, Akkar, January 2025.
  17. Syrian refugees, interviews with the author, Akkar and Beqaa Valley, January 2025.
  18. Interview with the author, Beqaa Valley, January 2025.
  19. Interview with the author, Beqaa Valley, January 2025.
  20. “The Impact of the Conflict on Syria: A Devastated Economy, Pervasive Poverty and a Challenging Road Ahead to Social and Economic Recovery,” UNDP, February 19, 2025, https://www.undp.org/arab-states/publications/syria-socio-economic-assessment.
  21. Interview with the author, Beqaa Valley, January 2025.
  22. Interview with the author, Beqaa Valley, January 2025.
  23. Interview with the author remotely, March 2025.
  24. Interview with the author, Akkar, January 2025.
  25. Interview with the author, Akkar, January 2025.
  26. “Unpacking the Effects of Thirteen Years of Crisis: A Snapshot of Humanitarian Needs in Post-Assad Syria,” REACH, January 22, 2025, https://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/unpacking-effects-thirteen-years-crisis-snapshot-humanitarian-needs-post-assad-syria-january-2025-whole-syria-enar.
  27. Interview with the author, Beqaa Valley, January 2025.
  28. Interview.
  29. Syrian refugees and humanitarian, interviews with the author, Akkar, Beqaa Valley, and remotely, January and February 2025.
  30. Interview with the author, Beirut, February 2025.
  31. Interview with the author, Beqaa Valley, January 2025.
  32. Interview with the author, Beqaa Valley, January 2025.
  33. Humanitarian, interview with the author, January 2025.
  34. Interviews with the author, Beqaa Valley, January 2025.
  35. Interview with the author, Khalde, January 2025.
  36. Interview with the author, Beqaa Valley, January 2025.
  37. Interview with the author, Beqaa Valley, January 2025.
  38. Syrian refugee, humanitarians, interviews with the author, Baalbek, Beirut, Khalde, Beqaa Valley, January 2025.
  39. Interview with the author, Akkar, January 2025.
  40. Interview with the author, Beqaa Valley, January 2025.
  41. Interview.
  42. Interviews with the author, Beqaa Valley, January 2025.
  43. Interview with the author, Beqaa Valley, January 2025.
  44. Hermel mayoralty, interview with the author, Hermel, January 2025.
  45. Ibid.
  46. UNHCR, “Lebanon Update: February-March 2025.”
  47. Humanitarian and Hermel mayoralty, interviews with the author, Beirut and Hermel, January and February 2025.
  48. Humanitarians and Hermel mayoralty, interviews with the author, Baalbek, Beirut and Hermel, January and February 2025.
  49. Humanitarian and Hermel mayoralty, interviews with the author, Baalbek and Hermel, January 2025.
  50. Humanitarians and Hermel mayoralty, interviews with the author, Baalbek, Hermel and remotely, January 2025.
  51. Humanitarians and Hermel mayoralty, interviews with the author, Beirut, Hermel, and remotely, January and February 2025.
  52. Humanitarians, interviews with the author, Beirut and remotely, January and February 2025.
  53. Humanitarian, interview with the author, Beirut, February 2025.
  54. Humanitarians, interviews with the author, Beirut and remotely, January and February 2025.
  55. Hermel mayoralty, interview.
  56. Humanitarians, interviews with the author, Beirut and remotely, February and March 2025.
  57. Humanitarian and Hermel mayoralty, interviews with the author, Baalbek and Hermel, February 2025.
  58. Hermel mayoralty, interview.
  59. Ibid.
  60. Interviews with the author, Beirut and remotely, January and February 2025.
  61. Humanitarian, interview with the author remotely, January 2025.
  62. Interview with the author, January 2025.
  63. Interview with the author remotely, March 6, 2025.
  64. Interview with the author, Tripoli, January 2025.
  65. Interview with the author, Akkar, March 2025.
  66. Interviews with the author, Tripoli, January 2025.
  67. Syria: Distressing Scale of Violence in Coastal Areas,” UN Human Rights: Office of the High Commissioner, March 11, 2025, https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/2025/03/syria-distressing-scale-violence-coastal-areas.
  68. Tamar Qiblawi et al., “‘Ethnic Cleansing!’ Videos Show Syrian Government-Aligned Forces Reveling in Massacre of Minorities in Coastal Town,” CNN, March 17, 2025, https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/17/middleeast/syria-massacre-alawite-minority-intl-invs/index.html.
  69. Interviews with the author, Akkar and Tripoli, March 2025.
  70. Ibid.
  71. Ibid.
  72. Interview with the author, Akkar, March 2025.
  73. Aya Iskandarani, “Fear Grips Alawites in Syria’s Homs as Assad ‘Remnants’ Targeted,” Agence France-Presse, January 10, 2025, https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2025/01/fear-grips-alawites-syrias-homs-assad-remnants-targeted.
  74. Newly arrived refugees, interviews with the author, Akkar, March 2025.
  75. Interview with the author, Akkar, March 2025.
  76. “President of the Syrian Arab Republic Remarks on the Latest Developments on the Syrian Coast” (in Arabic), SANA, March 9, 2025, https://www.sana.sy/?p=2196767.
  77. Interviews with the author, Akkar, March 2025.
  78. Interviews with the author, Akkar and Tripoli, March 2025.
  79. Ibid.
  80. Interviews with the author, Akkar, March 2025.
  81. Interview with the author, Akkar, March 2025.
  82. Interviews with the author, Akkar and Tripoli, March 2025.
  83. Interview with the author, Tripoli, March 2025.
  84. Interview with the author, Tripoli, March 2025.
  85. Interview with the author, Akkar, March 2025.
  86. Humanitarian and newly arrived refugees, Akkar and Tripoli, March 2025.
  87. “UNHCR Operational Framework: Voluntary Return of Syrian Refugees and IDPs 2025,” UNHCR, February 6, 2025, https://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/unhcr-operational-framework-voluntary-return-syrian-refugees-and-idps-2025.
  88. Interview.
  89. “Lebanon Emergency Flash Update,” UNHCR, February 10, 2025, https://reporting.unhcr.org/lebanon-emergency-flash-update-22.

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