Why HLP Must Be Central to Return Programming

Over 2.5 million Syrians have returned since December 2024. According to IOM's Syria Crisis Response Plan 2026, as of October 2025, 6.08 million people remain internally displaced, while 1.79 million IDP returnees and 782,000 arrivals from abroad have made their way back (IOM, 2026). The numbers signal movement. What they do not capture is how many of those returns are sustainable — and how many are being made into communities where the question of who owns what remains legally unresolved, administratively undocumented, and politically explosive.
Housing, Land, and Property rights are not a legal technicality sitting at the edge of return programming. They are its foundation. A returnee who cannot prove ownership of their home, access their land, or establish legal residency cannot access services, register their children in school, open a bank account, or participate in local governance. HLP insecurity does not delay integration — it makes it structurally impossible.
The Assad regime understood this. HLP violations were perpetrated systematically — as a tactic to punish and displace opponents, as war spoils to reward loyalists, and as a mechanism to erase evidence of gross human rights violations. Law No. 10 (2018) and Law No. 19 (2012) institutionalised property confiscation and land seizure, enabling the state to designate entire areas as "terrorism-affected" and seize property from those unable to prove ownership or accused under broadly applied terrorism provisions (ACHR, 2026). The legal instruments of dispossession were deliberate and systemic. The response to them has not been.

The interim government has taken some initial steps — including the establishment of special HLP committees and the issuance of Decree No. 16 in May 2025, which cancels seizure orders issued by security agencies between 2012 and 2024. However, as the Arab Commission for Human Rights documents, the decree does not cover seizures ordered by judicial bodies such as the Anti-Terrorism Court, and does not dismantle the broader legal framework that enabled those seizures in the first place (ACHR, 2026). The architecture of dispossession remains largely intact. The architecture of restitution is still being designed.

This gap has direct consequences for programming. Return and early recovery programmes that do not integrate HLP components are building on contested ground — literally. Infrastructure investment in a neighbourhood where property ownership is disputed creates new grievances. Livelihood support delivered to returnees who cannot secure their tenure reinforces precarity rather than stability. Social cohesion programming in communities divided by competing property claims cannot succeed without addressing those claims directly.

The technical responses are developing. IOM has established the HLP Vault — a secure digital repository safeguarding property records and supporting restitution and transitional justice efforts under Security Council Resolution 2254 (IOM, 2026). UN-Habitat is implementing the "My Home, My Neighbourhood" project across Aleppo and Homs, combining HLP documentation with community-led social cohesion interventions. Approximately 51,500 properties in Aleppo alone are estimated to require HLP-related intervention (UN-Habitat / FundsforNGOs, 2026). These are meaningful steps. But technical tools without political will and programme integration will not move at the scale the return process demands.

There is also a gendered dimension that return programming consistently underweights. Women's property rights in Syria were precarious before the conflict. Displacement, death of male relatives, informal marriages, and widespread forgery of civil and property records have compounded that precarity (Syria Report HLP, 2025). A return programme that does not explicitly address women's tenure security is not a return programme — it is a relocation. According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, displaced people hold the right of return to their homes including full restitution of property rights — and it is critical that those rights are safeguarded throughout displacement, not only upon return (NRC, 2024).
HLP is not one component among many in return programming. It is the condition under which everything else either holds or collapses.

Diana Khayyata is the founder of Levantina Consulting and former Project Leader for Housing, Land and Property Syria at PAX for Peace. She has led multi-partner HLP programmes and donor compliance processes across Syria's most complex displacement contexts.

Sources
IOM Syria Crisis Response Plan 2026- crisisresponse.iom.int
ACHR — Position Paper: HLP as a Key Tenant in Refugee Return and Transitional Justice in Syria, January 2026 - achrights.org
UN-Habitat / FundsforNGOs — My Home, My Neighbourhood: HLP Rights in Homs and Aleppo, February 2026 - fundsforngos.org
Syria Report HLP — Analysis and Features, including Reclaiming the Right to the City and Housing Justice, September 2025 - hlp.syria-report.com
NRC — My Home is My Heart: HLP Legal Resources in the MENA Region, 2024 - nrc.no
Syria HLP Technical Working Group — Strategic Framework 2026–2027, March 2026 - reliefweb.int

Diana Khayyata is the founder of Levantina Consulting and former Project Leader for Housing, Land and Property Syria at PAX for Peace. She has led multi-partner HLP programmes and donor compliance processes across Syria's most complex displacement contexts.

→ Read more insights | Contact Levantina Consulting