Syria: A new report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights has found that approximately 14 million Syrians are confronted with an immense obstacle preventing them from returning to their homes. This hurdle arises from laws enacted by the government that grant it the authority to seize land and property owned by Syrians. The report calls on the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to draw attention to these laws as a major impediment to the repatriation of refugees.

The report is groundbreaking in that it meticulously examines the extensive array of laws passed by President Mr. Bashar al-Assad’s government both prior to and following the civil uprising that began in 2011. It reveals the need to overhaul many of these laws in order to provide displaced individuals with a valid reason to return home and seek justice.

The Syrian government, which has long been isolated, is now reestablishing its presence on the diplomatic stage. President Assad recently attended an Arab League summit, a move towards normalization that has raised concerns among refugees in neighboring countries such as Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. These refugees fear that this diplomatic shift may result in their forced return across the borders.

Mr. Fadel Abdul Ghany, the executive director of the Syrian Network, expressed that people are hesitant to return because, even if they possess documentation or access to civil registries to prove property ownership, multiple laws have been passed that deprive them of rights and compensation in practice. These laws effectively provide the Syrian regime with a blank check to seize strategic and important areas of Syria.

The laws described by Ghany have implications for the families of the estimated 500,000 Syrian civilians who have not been officially declared deceased but are presumed to have been primarily killed by the regime, as well as the 115,000 forcibly disappeared individuals and the 12.3 million people who have been internally displaced within Syria or have fled the country. The research conducted for this report, which involved a year-long study of property laws passed by the Syrian assembly or through government executive orders, sheds light on the complex legal challenges that Syrian exiles and their families would encounter when attempting to reclaim their former land and property.

The report specifically addresses the publicly stated objective of law 10, which aimed to facilitate the reconstruction of properties destroyed during the military conflict. However, the report asserts that the actual outcome of the law has been the confiscation of properties belonging to dissidents and their forceful redistribution among the regime’s loyalist elite.

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