Three Israeli hostages freed in Gaza, Israel releases 369 Palestinians in exchange

LONDON: There are not many people who would consider starting over at the age of 103. But for father, grandfather and great-grandfather Jassim, who has spent the past decade in exile in Lebanon with his family, the dramatic end of the Syrian civil war meant he could finally return home.

And in May, Jassim did just that.

In 2013, after their hometown in Syria’s Homs Governorate was caught in the crossfire of the country’s bitter civil war, Jassim and the surviving members of his family fled.

Not all of them would make the journey to relative safety and a makeshift tent camp near Baalbek in eastern Lebanon. During one period of intense fighting three of his children were killed when a shell fell near the family’s house.

For Jassim, holding the memory of their loss deep in his heart, the return last month to the town of Al-Qusayr after 12 years as refugees in another country was achingly poignant.

“You raise your children to see them grow and bring life to your home,” he said, speaking through a translator for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. “Now they are gone.”

As the family discovered when they arrived back in Al-Qusayr last month, the home in which they had been raised was also gone.

“It was a bittersweet moment,” Jassim said. “I was happy to return to the place where I was born and raised but devastated to see my home reduced to rubble.”

Although they are back in their own country, the future for Jassim’s family remains uncertain. With luck they are on the cusp of a fresh start, but for Jassim returning to the land of his birth has a more final meaning.

“I came back to die in Syria,” he said.

UNHCR says about 550,000 Syrian refugees returned home between December and the end of May, along with a further 1.3 million displaced within the country. This is one of the brighter spots in UNHCR’s 2025 Global Trends report, published in the lead-up to World Refugee Day on June 20.

Overall, the report, which contains the latest statistics on refugees, asylum-seekers, the internally displaced and stateless people worldwide, makes for predictably gloomy reading.

As of the end of 2024, it found that 123.2 million people — about one in 67 globally — were forcibly displaced “as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations and events seriously disturbing public order.” This figure includes 5.9 million Palestinian refugees.

Of the 123.2 million, 42.7 million are refugees seeking sanctuary in a foreign country, and of these about 6.6 million are from countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Unsurprisingly, the largest number of refugees in the region under the UNHCR’s mandate in 2024 were from Syria — accounting for 5.9 million. But other numbers, although smaller, serve as a reminder of conflicts currently overshadowed by events in Syria and Gaza.

More than 300,000 Iraqi refugees were registered in 2024, along with 51,348 from Yemen, 23,736 from Egypt, 17,235 from Libya and 10,609 from Morocco.

Amid the devastation in Gaza since October 2023, and rising settler violence in the occupied West Bank, nearly as many Palestinians have fled as refugees in 2024 — 43,712 — as have been killed in Gaza.

Globally, there is a glimmer of hope. In the second half of 2024 the rate of forced displacement slowed and, says UNHCR, “operational data and initial estimates for 2025 indicate that global forced displacement may begin to fall during 2025.”

Indeed, the agency estimates that by the end of April 2025 the total number of forcibly displaced people — a term that includes people displaced within their own country and those seeking refuge in another state — had fallen by 1 percent to 122.1 million.

But whether that trend continues depends very much on several factors, said Tarik Argaz, spokesperson for UNHCR’s regional bureau for the Middle East and North Africa in Amman, Jordan.

There are, Argaz told Arab News, undoubtedly “signs of hope in the report, particularly in the area of solutions. But during the remainder of 2025, much will depend on the dynamics in key situations.

“While we should keep hopes high, we have to be very careful in interpreting the trends in the international scene,” including “whether the situation in South Sudan does not deteriorate further, and whether conditions for return improve, in particular in Afghanistan and Syria.”

In 2024, about 9.8 million forcibly displaced people worldwide were able to return home, including 1.6 million refugees — the highest number for more than two decades — and 8.2 million internally displaced people — the second highest total yet recorded. 

However, Argaz said, “it must be acknowledged that many of these returns were under duress or in adverse conditions to countries like Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Ukraine, which remain fragile.”

For Syrians in particular, “there is uncertainty and significant risks, especially for minority groups. Syrians in the country and those returning from abroad need support with shelter, access to basic services such as water, sanitation, employment and legal assistance, among other things,” he said.

“The economic conditions remain dire, while the security situation remains fragile in many parts of the country.”

And while Jassim and his family are pleased to be back in Syria, UNHCR is concerned that not all Syrian refugees are returning entirely of their own free will.

“UNHCR is supporting those who are choosing to return,” Argaz said. “But returns should be safe, voluntary and dignified. We continue to call on states not to forcibly return Syrians to any part of Syria and to continue allowing civilians fleeing Syria access to territory and to seek asylum.”

The Global Trends report also highlights the burden placed on host countries by refugees.

Relative to the size of its population, Lebanon was hosting the largest number of refugees of any country in the world in 2024, accounting for one in eight of the population. 

Lebanon’s already complex situation was further complicated in September 2024 when the war between Israel and Hezbollah displaced nearly a million people within the country.

By the end of April, there were still 90,000 people internally displaced in Lebanon. But between September and October last year the conflict led to an estimated 557,000 people fleeing Lebanon for Syria — of whom over 60 percent were Syrians who had originally sought sanctuary in Lebanon. 

The issue of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa has become a delicate matter in Europe, with right-wing parties winning votes over the issue and centrist governments taking anti-migrant stances to assuage increasingly angry voters.

“But contrary to perceptions in the global North,” Argaz said, “60 percent of forcibly displaced people stay within their own country, as internally displaced people. Of those who leave as refugees, 67 percent go to neighboring countries — low and middle-income countries host 73 percent of the world’s refugees.”

For example, at the end of 2024, almost 80 percent of the 6.1 million Syrian refugees and asylum-seekers were hosted by neighboring countries — 2.9 million in Turkiye, 755,000 in Lebanon, 611,000 in Jordan, 304,000 in Iraq and 134,000 in Egypt.

The situation in Sudan and South Sudan is particularly perilous. Sudan’s two million refugees, although scattered across dozens of countries, from Algeria to Zimbabwe, are concentrated mainly in Chad, South Sudan and Libya, with tens of thousands each in countries including Egypt, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia and Uganda, with sizable numbers in the UK and France.

Despite offering refuge to almost half a million refugees from Sudan, 2.29 million South Sudanese are seeking sanctuary elsewhere — in Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya and, in a reflection of the internecine nature of the violence in the region, Sudan.

For all the world’s refugees and internally displaced, UNHCR is the lifeline on which they depend, both for support while displaced and upon returning to shattered lives and homes. But with donor nations slashing funds, this work is under threat.

“Severe cuts in global funding announced this year have caused upheaval across the humanitarian sector, putting millions of lives at risk,” Argaz said.

“We call for continuing funding of UNHCR programs that save lives, assist refugees and IDPs returning home and reinforce basic infrastructure and social services in host communities as an essential investment in regional and global security.

“In addition, more responsibility sharing from the rest of the world with the countries that host the bulk of refugees is crucial and needed.”

In December, UNHCR announced it had secured a record $1.5 billion in early funding from several countries for 2025. But, as Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, said at the time, “generous as it is, humanitarian funding is not keeping pace with the growing needs.”

The funding commitment of $1.5 billion represents only 15 percent of the estimated $10.248 billion UNHCR says it will need for the whole of 2025. Of that total, the single largest proportions, $2.167 and $2.122 billion respectively, will be spent on projects in East Africa and in the Middle East and North Africa.