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UN urges more support to speed up Syria refugee returns

June 22, 2025 00:00:00


DAMASCUS, June 21 (AFP): UN refugee agency chief Filippo Grandi has urged more international support for Syria to speed up reconstruction and enable further refugee returns after some 14 years of civil war.

"I am here also to really make an appeal to the international community to provide more help, more assistance to the Syrian government in this big challenge of recovery of the country," Grandi told reporters on Friday on the sidelines of a visit to Damascus.

Syrians who had been displaced internally or fled abroad have begun gradually returning home since the December overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad, whose brutal repression of peaceful anti-government protests in 2011 triggered war.

But the wide-scale destruction, including to basic infrastructure, remains a major barrier to returns.

Grandi said over two million people had returned to their areas of origin, including around 1.5 million internally displaced people, while some 600,000 others have come back from neighbouring countries including Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

"Two million of course is only a fraction of the very big number of Syrian refugees and displaced, but it is a very big figure," he said.

According to UNHCR, some 13.5 million Syrians remain displaced internally or abroad.


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