Fifth convoy for the 'voluntary return' of Syrian refugees and migrants leaves Sports City

BEIRUT — A fifth convoy for the "voluntary return" of Syrian refugees and migrants, as part of a plan implemented by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), departed Wednesday morning from Beirut's Sports City.

This is the largest operation organized since the launch of the voluntary return program to Syria on July 1, as it transported 400 people, according to figures provided by UNHCR to L’Orient-Le Jour.

The exact number of people involved was not immediately available.

As with previous convoys, the return was coordinated by General Security, with the UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Lebanese Red Cross, and several humanitarian organizations.

The convoy is scheduled to cross into Syria via the Masnaa border crossing (east of Shtaura in the Bekaa), as with the first three convoys of the same type. The previous convoy crossed the border via the Arida checkpoint in the north.

The buses chartered on Wednesday departed for Homs, Hama, Idlib, and Aleppo in western Syria.

These 400 Syrian refugees join the 573 who had already chosen to return to their country of origin through organized departures in the four previous convoys, which left from Beirut or Tripoli. In total, around 114,000 people have registered for the voluntary return program, which involves the deactivation of their refugee files upon arrival in Syria.

However, these organized returns represent only a minority of the overall returns, the majority of which are carried out through spontaneous initiatives. In general, it is expected that around 400,000 Syrians will return to their country by the end of 2025.

Accordingly, 294,912 refugee files have already been deactivated by UNHCR in Lebanon between the beginning of the year and the end of September, due to either confirmed or presumed departures. However, this figure may be underestimated, as a significant portion of Syrian exiles in Lebanon are not registered with UNHCR.

Supervised by the UNHCR, the first convoy of "voluntary returns" organized at the end of July after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, on Dec. 8, 2024, returned only 71 people, out of the 17,000 refugees who had expressed interest in the plan launched on July 1 by the U.N. agency.

A second convoy involved 300 people in mid-September. A third, two weeks ago, carried only about ten families, while the fourth, a week ago, concerned 168 people.

More broadly, one million Syrian refugees have returned from abroad to Syria since Assad's fall, UNHCR announced two weeks ago, calling on the international community to “increase its support to end the suffering and displacement of millions of Syrians forced to flee their homes over the past 14 years and help rebuild the country.”

While describing these mass returns as “a sign of great hope and high expectations among Syrians after the political transition in their country,” the UNHCR stressed that those returning home face “immense challenges” and lamented that funds to address the Syrian crisis are “declining.”

In Syria, less than a quarter of the funds U.N. agencies said they need to provide aid this year have been supplied.

Earlier this month, Lisa Abou Khaled, spokesperson for the Lebanese branch of the UNHCR, told L'Orient Today that “those who choose to take part in these group returns are a minority. Most people return by their own means.”

She noted that “114,000 registrations for the voluntary departure program have been recorded, while at least 238,000 cases have been removed from our lists in Lebanon in 2025 after an authenticated or presumed return, pending September's figures.”

The goal set by the Lebanese government is 400,000 returns by the end of the year, according to Social Development Minister Haneen Sayed.