Publication year:
2026
Format:
(15.8 MiB)
Publisher:
Save the Children Syria
Over a year after the political transition of December 2024, more than a million Syrian refugees and nearly two million internally displaced people have returned to their areas of origin, in one of the largest return movements in the world. But are children returning to conditions that can sustain them? Drawing on primary research with returnee families in Aleppo, Deir-ez-Zor, and Rural Damascus (90 household surveys, 12 focus group discussions, and 12 child case studies), this brief applies Save the Children’s child-sensitive durable solutions framework to Syria’s return context, examining children’s physical, material, legal, and psychosocial safety. It finds that returns are outpacing recovery: most assessed communities remain unliveable for children, three in four families would choose to move again if conditions worsen, and children bear the highest cost, accounting for 37% of civilian explosive-ordnance casualties in the year after the transition. The brief argues that the question for policy is not how many children have returned, but whether the conditions for them to live, learn, and recover have returned with them, and sets out what governments, the UN, and donors must do to make return safe and durable for children.
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Advocacy, Child Protection, Child Rights Governance, Child Rights Programming, Child-Sensitive Social Protection, Children with Disabilities, Education, Food Security and Livelihoods, Gender Equality, Health and Nutrition, Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS), Migration and Displacement, Protection of Children from Violence, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)
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