Departure of a convoy of Syrian refugees under the auspices of UNHCR and IOM, on Oct. 2, 2025, from Beirut's Karantina neighborhood. (Credit: Mohammad Yassin/L'Orient Today)
BEIRUT — General Security announced on Tuesday that a sixth convoy is scheduled for Thursday for the 'voluntary return' of Syrian refugees back to Syria. It is the latest in a series of convoys arranged as part of a plan put in place by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The buses will leave from Tripoli's Rashid Karame International Fair at 6 a.m. and enter Syria via the Arida border crossing in the North. It is the second of the six convoys organized so far to use this border crossing, which Israel bombed during last year's war in Lebanon. The other four convoys entered Syria through the Masnaa border crossing.
The convoy has been arranged in coordination between General Security, UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Lebanese Red Cross and the Syrian authorities. Several other humanitarian organizations are also reportedly involved.
The dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad was overthrown last December by a coalition of rebel forces that has since taken up leadership in Syria bringing an end to 14 years of devastating civil war. The transitional period has been marked by hope, uncertainty and, on two occasions, deadly outbreaks of sectarian violence, including massacres.
While UNHCR has described Syrians returning home is “a sign of great hope and high expectations by Syrians after the political transition in their country,” the organization also warned that returnees face “immense challenges,” noting that funding for the Syrian crisis is dwindling; less than a quarter of the requested U.N. aid for Syria this year has been supplied.
The number of people set to be on board this latest round of buses is not yet known. The previous convoy was the largest so far, transporting about 400 people last Wednesday from Sports City, in Beirut's southern suburbs, according to figures sent to L'Orient Today by UNHCR.
In total, 974 Syrian migrants and refugees chose to return to Syria through these organized departures, all of which left from either Beirut or Tripoli. Roughly 114,000 people have registered as candidates for the voluntary departure program.
However, those participating in the convoys remain a minority. Most Syrians crossing back over the border into their homeland are doing so independently. According to UNHCR, from January until October of this year, 294,912 Syrian refugees were either presumed or confirmed to have returned to Syria and were subsequently removed from UNHCR's register in Lebanon.
It's likely the total number of Syrians leaving from Lebanon is much higher, considering a substantial number of refugees in Lebanon are not registered with the UNHCR. As of March 31, 2025, 722,173 Syrians were registered with UNHCR as refugees, but the organization stopped registering refugees — at the behest of the Lebanese government — in May of 2015. The real number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon is estimated at 1.4 million people.
The Lebanese government is aiming to see 400,000 Syrian refugees return to Syria by the end of the year, according to Social Development Minister Haneen Sayed.
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