IRC publishes "Home, but Not Whole: The Fragile Return and Reintegration of Syrian Returnees"

IRC launched a Syria-focused policy report, Home, but Not Whole: The Fragile Return and Reintegration of Syrian Returnees.

Summary of key findings

• Nine in ten returnees found essential services—including water, healthcare, and electricity—to be unavailable or inadequate upon return.
• 71% are living in damaged housing, with limited organised support for repairs or reconstruction.
• Only 18% received adequate support during their return journey, while 44% said conditions were worse than they had expected.
• The most consistently identified driver of community tensions was unequal access to services and assistance, rather than identity-based divisions.

Summary of key recommendations

The report calls on the Syrian government, international donors, host states, and humanitarian and development actors to act urgently on five priorities:

1. Invest in area-based service delivery — water, electricity, schools and roads — that reaches entire communities, not just returnees, to reduce competition and build social cohesion.
2. Fund humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding programmes in tandem. Syria's recovery cannot be sequenced, communities need emergency assistance, longer-term investment and social repair at the same time. Donors must move beyond siloed funding streams and support integrated programmes that address immediate needs while building the conditions for stability.
3. Maintain durable solutions, including resettlement, for those who cannot yet safely return. Host states must fully respect the principle of non-refoulement and avoid any erosion of legal status or access to essential services that could undermine genuine, voluntary, and informed return decisions.
4. Provide flexible, multi-year core funding to local civil society and women-led organisations. Local organisations are indispensable to Syria's recovery, but they cannot shoulder this responsibility without sustained donor investment. Predictable, flexible core funding—not short-term, project-based grants—is essential to strengthen locally led responses and support long-term recovery.
5. Establish dedicated funding streams for MHPSS, social cohesion, and peacebuilding. Despite being consistently identified as critical priorities across all seven governorates, these areas remain significantly underfunded in current portfolios.