As Pressure Mounts for Syrian Refugees to Return Home, Women Face an Impossible Choice

Noor was pregnant with her second child when her family returned to Syria in 2019. Having fled five years earlier to neighboring Lebanon as a brutal civil war swept across the country, reports of de-escalation in some parts of Syria came as welcome news to many that year. 

“They were telling me everything was fine,” Noor, whose name has been changed for safety reasons, told More to Her Story. The 32-year-old mother from Hama, a western city heavily targeted during the war, was one of thousands of displaced Syrians returning that year, her husband and one-year-old son in tow, only to discover the reality on the ground was different. 

“We didn't feel safe. I was always worried,” she recalled, fearing for her husband amid claims that young men were being recruited to fight. Then one day, her husband didn’t come home. Noor later learned he was killed at a checkpoint. 

“Now, I'm wondering why we came back. I wish we hadn't.” 

Noor made the difficult decision to leave again after losing her husband, crossing an informal border to safety in northern Lebanon, where she remains today with her two young children. “Life forced me to come back here,” she reflected. 

More than a year since Syria’s regime under Bashar al-Assad was toppled, the situation in the country remains complex, and in some cases, dangerous. Many cities are still in a state of rubble, unexploded bombs litter the countryside, and sectarian tensions have led to violent clashes and civilian fatalities. Despite this, there are mounting international calls for Syrian refugees to return home. 

Lebanon is home to the highest number of refugees per capita in the world, including around 1.14 million Syrian people as of November 2025. UNHCR says around 80% of Syrians there don’t have legal residency, and many live in informal shelters and struggle to afford basic necessities like food. But just days ago, Lebanon’s Social Affairs Minister said the ‘majority’ of Syrian refugees should go home this year. “We can't carry this burden any longer,” Haneen Sayed told The National. Other countries echo similar sentiments: the UK may resume ‘forced deportations’ of Syrian refugees this year, while officials in Germany said there are “no longer any grounds for asylum.” 

Yet for many, “peace” in Syria does not equal safety. Countless refugees are not ready to return — and some may never be. Noor felt relief when the Assad regime fell. Still, she worries she cannot build a stable life for her young children there.

“If I go there, how will I live?” she asked. “Nowhere feels like home.”

The UNHCR says 501,603 Syrian refugees were ‘inactivated’ from their records in 2025, either due to confirmed or presumed returns to Syria. But many stay in neighbouring Lebanon out of fear, lack of resources, or support. For women and girls, the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) found that the situation is even more uncertain, especially for women-led households, such as the situation facing Noor.  

“Refugees have a really impossible choice,” Sabrina Derham, Country Director for the DRC Lebanon, told More to Her Story. “Do they stay in Lebanon in tough conditions? Do they go back to Syria, where it's also extremely difficult?” 

There are also other concerns being felt across the country. In Beirut, 16-year-old Syrian refugee Haneen spoke of one of the biggest anxieties her teenage friends shared about returning. Research shows that nearly 2.5 million children in Syria don’t attend school, and more than 7,000 education centres remain damaged or destroyed. As a student at the Alsama Education Center in Shatila refugee camp, Haneen has the unique opportunity to finish her studies and even set her sights on university. She doesn’t know if she’d have such chances in Syria. 

“When the war happened in Lebanon, [my friend] left, but kept saying that she had a passion to continue her dream, to continue her education,” Haneen said. “When she came back to Syria, her parents married her off…she now has a kid.” 

Syrian women and girls in Lebanon face deep and layered obstacles that make returning home difficult, even as the environment in Lebanon grows increasingly hostile. In 2025, thousands of refugee children were barred from Lebanese schools after authorities required non-Lebanese students to present either valid residency papers or a UN refugee certificate—documents many families don’t have. The same documentation gap is also creating obstacles at the growing number of local checkpoints across the country, where refugees risk being turned back or detained.

“If you want to go and find work, if you want to go to a health clinic, if you want to send your child to school, you have to think about where you're going to travel. And you're going to have to go to a checkpoint,” Derham explained. DRC, an NGO serving as a vital lifeline for vulnerable communities in Lebanon and Syria and beyond, found that 83% of Syrians without legal residency experienced movement restrictions.

“Men tend to be more of a focus at checkpoints and during curfews, so we’ve seen more women attempting to access work,” Derham said. At the same time, 19 percent of Syrian women reported growing difficulty finding informal work as conditions for refugees deteriorate. And 64 percent of those surveyed by the NGO said they were experiencing emotional distress.

Yet beyond documentation and restrictions on movement, for some, the risk of returning to Syria is simply too great. Alawaite mother-of-eight Hala, 38, fled from the Syrian coastal city of Tartus with her husband and children in 2025 and now lives in a single room of a makeshift shelter on the outskirts of Akkar. 

“We heard that they were attacking us, and we left immediately,” she recalled about the massacres against the Alawites last year, a religious minority that the former ruling Assad family was part of. 

“All the newcomers witnessed the massacres, and every family has either one who is missing, dead, or injured,” Hala said. “They even killed the doctors who were treating [my children in Syria].”

Syrians who arrived in Lebanon after 2024 remain unable to secure legal documentation, even when they have credible fears for their safety back home. “They fear persecution and violence in Syria, but there’s no way for them to legalize their stay in Lebanon,” Derham said. “They are just in limbo.”

Hala became a focal point in the refugee community, helping other arrivals adjust to a new life of uncertainty and running awareness groups among the Syrian refugees. “Everything is needed here. Food, water, basic needs,” she said. 

In the corner of the room she shared with her family, she hugged her young boys, uncertain about their future but relieved they had made it out of Syria alive.

Hala still longed “for peace to come, for everyone to be able to return safely to their houses without fear.” For now, though, she said she “doesn’t have trust yet.” Others voiced similar hopes of returning to Syria one day—when the conditions feel right, and safe enough to begin again.

Standing beside her friends, Haneen and the schoolgirls at Alsama School spoke of wanting to one day make a difference in Syria. But first, they said, comes education.

“In the future, after I graduate, I will go back to Syria,” Haneen said. “I want to share my story with other girls.”