Foreign Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: A new Syria: assessing UK strategy in a transitional state, HC 578
Tuesday 3 November 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 3 November 2026.
Members present: Emily Thornberry (Chair); Alex Ballinger; Aphra Brandreth; Dan Carden; Abtisam Mohamed; Edward Morello; Jessica Toale; Sir John Whittingdale.
Questions 69-124
Witnesses
I: Cathrine Brun, Deputy Director, Centre for Lebanese Studies; Fellow of the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge, Dawn Chatty, Former Director, Refugee Studies Centre, and Harmonie Toros, Professor in Politics and International Relations, University of Reading.
II: H.E Farah Berry, Ambassador of the Lebanese Republic to the United Kingdom, H.E Haneen Sayed, Minister of Social Affairs of the Lebanese Republic, and H.E Osman Koray Ertaş, Ambassador of the Republic of Türkiye to the United Kingdom.
Examination of witnesses
Witnesses: Cathrine Brun, Dawn Chatty and Harmonie Toros.
Chair: Welcome to the Foreign Affairs Committee session on Syria. We will hear from two panels today: first from regional experts and secondly from representatives of the Governments of Lebanon and Turkey. Will the witnesses please introduce themselves?
Cathrine Brun: I am the deputy director of the Centre for Lebanese Studies, an independent research institute based between Beirut and the UK. I am also a fellow of the faculty of history at the University of Cambridge. I am a human geographer.
Dawn Chatty: I am emeritus professor of anthropology and forced migration at the University of Oxford and a former director of the Refugee Studies Centre. My most recent research has focused on displaced Syrians in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
Chair: Spot on—exactly what we are looking at.
Harmonie Toros: I am a professor in politics and international relations at the University of Reading. I have been particularly following the question of British citizens in north-east Syria.
Chair: Have you given evidence before?
Harmonie Toros: I have, yes.
Q69 Chair: We are looking at the situation of Syrian refugees, particularly those living in countries around Syria. As experts who have been looking at this for some years, how do you feel the position has changed over the last couple of years, particularly since the fall of Assad?
Dawn Chatty: Perhaps I should say, as a preface, that Syria lost about half of its population of 23 million: 6 million across international borders, mainly to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, and another 6 million were displaced internally.
After 2024, I think there was a sense that everybody was going to rush back, but the country was, in its 12 or 13 years of armed conflict, really destroyed. The regime, in battling the opposition in the country, pretty much destroyed schools, health clinics, hospitals—these were all targeted—and neighbourhoods, particularly neighbourhoods of informal settlements, which I would say are the very poor elements of the country.
After December 2024, some well-placed elite rushed back to see what it was like, but those who were on the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan were very cautious. They do want to return, but the key word is dignity: they want to return in dignity and in safety. Very few of them feel that is possible yet. I can comment more on that later, but that is an opening—unless you want me to say a little more.
Q70 Chair: That is great; thank you. You will have plenty of opportunities to develop your thoughts, but that is a good opener. Do you want to add anything, Cathrine?
Cathrine Brun: I think that is a very good description of the situation. I would be a little bit cautious, though, to say that everyone wants to return. After many years of displacement, I think the picture might be a bit more nuanced. It is important to understand how people have developed their lives in exile, even under very precarious and difficult conditions, particularly for young people who might have grown up in the host countries. That means that return might be a possibility in the future but, as Professor Chatty said, it might take quite a long time to prepare for it. It is important to keep that in mind when we think about the discussion on return.
Q71 Chair: People have been going back, haven’t they?
Cathrine Brun: Yes.
Chair: What are the drivers of that?
Cathrine Brun: What we know is that people who have gone back have had more access to housing and livelihoods. Many of those who have gone back have also reported many difficulties in going back. But those who are sitting on the fence, so to speak, many of whom would want to go back, do not have access to housing and livelihoods. Those are the key factors that are holding them back. That makes it very hard, if you are responsible for a family, to go back at this current time. Even though the situation where they are might not be a situation where they can develop their life a lot, it feels more predictable, even in conditions of war, like in Lebanon, than going back to a situation where you do not know whether you can find shelter or whether you will have a livelihood to support your family.
Q72 Chair: We saw some refugees in Lebanon, and I asked the women whether they would go home. They said that they wouldn’t until they felt secure and until there were schools. It really brings home to you just how bad the situation is in Syria, as Dr Chatty was saying, that even the most basics cannot really be guaranteed.
Cathrine Brun: Yes. Particularly for women, it seems that security is a big issue in return considerations. It is also about the freedom of women. People are worried about what their daughters will meet in Syria currently. Education is a more mixed picture—
Q73 Chair: We will ask some specific questions about education later. Dr Toros, can I ask you the same question?
Harmonie Toros: In terms of the situation in north-east Syria, the largest camp, al-Hawl, essentially collapsed in chaos in January and February. That had considerable repercussions for Syrians and for third-country nationals, including British citizens and British children. That has led to quite a change in terms of where people have been brought to. The remaining camp, al-Roj, still has British citizens in it.
We have an added concern now, in that when al-Hawl collapsed, and when the Panorama prison was opened, US and US-backed forces moved 5,700 men into prisons in Iraq. From a British perspective, it is possible that there may be British citizens and British children who have now been moved into prisons in Iraq.
Q74 Chair: Does anybody know? The Red Cross would always be the people one would go to; are they able to say how many Brits there are, or have been, in these camps?
Harmonie Toros: I get figures from various sources; very often they do not want to be quoted when they give me figures. There is clearly an issue here. I would love the British Government to inquire, because they have an embassy—we have an embassy in Iraq, right? We know which prisons they are in and we can go and ask whether there are British citizens there. Sentences have been taken on by the Iraqis. Finding out whether and how many British citizens have been moved to Iraq, and in what conditions they are being held, aside from those who are still in Syria and in the other camp, al-Roj, are all really important questions. I agree with you.
Q75 Chair: Could you give us even a guesstimate as to how many Brits may have been moved to Iraq?
Harmonie Toros: No, I can’t. Everyone I spoke to told me it was most likely that some British citizens were moved, but we are talking a dozen at most. We are not talking very big numbers.
Q76 Chair: How many Brits are left in al-Roj?
Harmonie Toros: There are at least 40, and most of them are children.
Chair: And women—mothers.
Harmonie Toros: Yes, it is only women and children—there are no men in al-Roj—and most of them are minors.
Q77 Sir John Whittingdale: You have talked about whether the refugees in neighbouring countries want to come home and what might be holding them back. What is the attitude of the Syrian Government? Are they putting out a message saying, “You are welcome. We will look after you. We would like you to return”?
Dawn Chatty: Let me put it the other way: there is no message trying to stop people returning. As you know, under the Assad regime there was a statement, “If you left, you are considered a traitor; you can’t come back,” particularly towards Palestinian refugees in Syria.
Chair: I did not know that. That’s extraordinary.
Dawn Chatty: Well, that was a fact. There are a number of Palestinian refugees from Syria who have gone back—middle-class people who were not living in Yarmouk but were part of the urban establishment.
The Government of Ahmed al-Sharaa, which is a transitional Government, has not encouraged everybody to rush back, and the reason for that is that he is really desperate to start the reconstruction and rebuilding of Syria, which is very difficult because sanctions have not been entirely lifted. Outside the sanctions, there are many, many Syrians in the diaspora—there have been since the 1980s—who would like to find ways of sending money to help to support their towns and villages, but the banking system still prevents money from being transferred to Syria. They have not really caught up with the reality of what is taking place.
I would like to make one more point here. Turkey has taken a very humane, instrumental approach to return. As in the Dayton accords, it has permitted Syrians, over a period of about six months, to do a look and see. Heads of household of Syrian families in Turkey have been allowed to return and see whether it’s okay. That window remained open only for about six months, whereas if a head of household in Jordan went back to see whether it was okay and whether their house still survived, they could not return to Jordan. That look and see, which was first established in the 1990s in the Dayton accords—article VII—should be encouraged by all the neighbouring states.
Q78 Edward Morello: I want to follow up on your previous point, Professor Chatty, on the state having an open-door policy—“Please return”—although not pushing it hard. To what extent is that a result of the fact that a significant influx of returning Syrian nationals would put additional pressure on the state? My understanding is that it is already struggling to provide essential services to vast swathes of the country, so a massive influx of individuals would add pressure to that.
Dawn Chatty: Absolutely. The urban infrastructure in Homs, Hama and Aleppo and on the outskirts of Damascus has been almost entirely destroyed. In many of the cities in the country, people have electricity for only four hours a day. There would be a terrific burden if everybody were to return, but obviously they are not going to. They want to return when it’s safe.
As Cathrine pointed out, many of these families have been out of Syria for 12 or 13 years. Their children have grown up abroad. Their education is really important, and schools have not yet been completely rebuilt. As of last week, there has been a huge debate as to how much the curriculum is going to be changed, besides dropping the Ba’athist propaganda. Right now there is huge opposition to the proposal to make the curriculum quite conservative, and those who have been educated abroad are looking at that really carefully before they have their families go back.
Q79 Abtisam Mohamed: I want to take us back to 2011, when there was a large-scale movement of Syrian refugees into nearby countries. I am keen to hear your views, Dawn, about the impact on those countries economically and in terms of cohesion.
Dawn Chatty: First, I should say that Turkey is the only country that has put into effect a domestic asylum law, in 2014, which meant it provided temporary protection to Syrians not as refugees but as displaced people.
Abtisam Mohamed: What is the difference?
Dawn Chatty: For Syrians it was a big difference. They did not want to be called refugees. It was a matter of dignity. It also meant that the UN Refugee Agency was not going to be responsible for them—it was the Turkish Government, under the AFAD programme. It provided them with healthcare and free education through to university, once the Syrian children learned Turkish well enough. In the end, I think about 200,000 Syrians took on Turkish citizenship, alongside their Syrian citizenship. These are people who are going to take a long time to make any decision about returning.
In terms of the impact on the economy, the population of Turkey is similar to the population of Germany, even though it took four times the number of Syrians that Germany did. I do not believe there was a terribly negative impact on the economy. Some could say that parts of the economy flourished. It is not the same for Lebanon, of course, because before the armed conflict you had half a million Syrians in Lebanon, working in agriculture and construction. The figure of a million probably includes a lot of their families. These were—I am going to say—the poorer Syrians. Middle-class and upper-class Syrians also went to Lebanon, but they invested and so on, so there was not that impact.
Several reports suggest that the impact of Syrians in Lebanon was not quite as severe as is often made out, because a lot of the landlords in the Beqaa valley made a lot of money from renting land for Syrians to put up their tents and so on. Obviously, Lebanon has suffered from many other things at the same time and it all compounded, besides the implosion of the banking system in 2020.
Chair: We met a woman whose brightest, her eldest daughter, went off to work for the landlord every day. She was doing that in part exchange for the rent on the land where they were able to put their tents.
Dawn Chatty: In Jordan, again, the figures vary, but some figures suggest that about 800,000 Syrians went to Jordan. In the first couple of years, about 300 Syrian factories moved to Jordan, so in the first couple of years there was a decrease in unemployment. But obviously over time the numbers had a significant impact on the infrastructure in Jordan. I have just come back from Jordan; access to water is a huge problem there, and the extra numbers make it worse.
In 2016, something called the Jordan compact was put into effect, which I am going to say was not very well thought out. It restricted work permits to people in construction and in agriculture, but many of the Syrians who fled into Syria were skilled workers or professionals, who found it very difficult to work.
Perhaps Lebanon has suffered the most, because you are talking about 20% to 25% of their population being from Syria. There are other issues in terms of the relations between countries, and discrimination. In Lebanon, obviously Hezbollah was very supportive of the regime in Syria, which created issues for those who were fleeing the regime. There was a lot more tension in Lebanon over the number of Syrians in the country.
Q80 Abtisam Mohamed: I would like to follow up on that and come to you, Cathrine, on cohesion and how Governments portrayed new communities coming into the country. Were the statements the Governments put out supportive, or were there different factors in play there?
Cathrine Brun: I will add to what Dawn said. We did a macroeconomic study of the impact of Syrian refugees on Lebanon, and similar studies have been done in Jordan and Turkey. At the macroeconomic level, it has not had a huge impact, but I think it is important to note that a lot of the impact is felt locally. Aid that has come into the countries has been used to keep up finances in some ways, but both the nature of aid, which we might want to discuss more later, and the fact that local communities have been overwhelmed by infrastructure and other things has had a big impact and also made tensions between groups.
What we know about refugee situations generally is that they often are protracted, but when the messaging from the beginning is, “This is going to be temporary. You are only here temporarily. You are a burden to the community,” that can also create tensions. Sometimes, with all the other crises that are going on simultaneously, both in Lebanon and also in Jordan in terms of economic developments and so on, it has been easy to blame the refugees.
It is important also to think at different levels, but I think the messaging has been very clear, particularly from Jordan and Lebanon, which I know better, about refugees being there temporarily. That has therefore impacted how you could think that refugees could have been part of developing the economy. Actually, in terms of economic development for example, of course, Lebanon lost huge export opportunities to Syria during the war, but then the purchasing power of Syrians in Lebanon kind of balanced some of that. The discourse was always a question of being a burden, and in the context of compounded crises, that has also been very important.
The discourse of return is now also very strong. I have an important example; if you have been to Lebanon, maybe you have heard about this. About 130,000 Syrian refugees have been internally displaced during the Israeli war on Lebanon. That means secondary displacement, in a way. Syrian refugees did not feel welcome in the shelters that were open for Lebanese displaced, and I think that says something about some of the tensions that are often felt even in an emergency.
Q81 Jessica Toale: Cathrine, you pre-empted my question a little bit by mentioning aid and overseas development assistance, but I particularly wanted to look at the impact of cuts from lots of donor countries on Syrian refugees and also the host countries. I wonder if you could start with that as a reflection.
Cathrine Brun: That is a very big question and a very important one; hopefully we might come back to this in the next session as well. There is a huge need for assistance in countries that take such a big burden of refugees. There is the question of burden sharing or responsibility sharing. What has happened over time is that aid going towards refugees is often labelled as humanitarian, which means it is short term and it goes in very short cycles, so it is more life support than thinking about development.
To some extent, you could say that some of the aid that has come in over these years has also led to what we often call an “NGO-isation” of civil society—where NGOs have become service providers more than maybe taking what we often think of as a civil society role and creating change and so on. With the different crises and so on that are going on, and with this kind of life support approach, when aid goes away, there is a huge gap, and that is felt very strongly at the moment. It has an impact on the civil society that has existed on that, but it also has a huge impact on access to education and health services, and it is currently also impacting food assistance. Partly, that is a problem we need to solve now, but it is partly that we need to look at how we are organising aid to create that dependency. Does that answer your question?
Q82 Jessica Toale: That is very helpful. I think we recognise that in a lot of humanitarian situations, there is often a gap between the short term and the longer term funding cycle.
Dawn, looking at UK aid specifically, is there a way that that can be organised more effectively? Could we be doing anything other than giving aid as a UK supporter in these crises?
Dawn Chatty: In terms of this particular series of events or crises—I am not sure which word to use—the UK could do a great deal more. It is not so much emergency assistance that is required in Lebanon and Jordan, and Turkey does not need this kind of assistance. It is so different from what we are seeing in Gaza and in the west bank.
They could focus a great deal on promoting and helping in the development of education and healthcare. This is probably a study that you are probably very familiar with—one of the big problems in Lebanon is that where UNHCR was working, they would have an MOU and be working very effectively, but they couldn’t cover the healthcare requirements. Refugees often had to find money or borrow money in order to get emergency care or cancer treatment and so on.
It is not so much the emergency. It is helping to develop a health and education system that can support displaced Syrians while they are in these countries. Also, I think the UK needs to focus on Syria itself. Education is the big issue. If a really sound curriculum is put into effect and there is a real development in the rebuilding of schools, people are going to be more interested in returning, because that then allows them some sort of dignity.
It is not really emergency aid that the UK needs to look at in this context.
Q83 Jessica Toale: My understanding is that the majority of refugees are in urban settings in these countries. Is there a difference in the type of support that is needed between the urban and more rural setting?
Dawn Chatty: In Lebanon, many are rural. The Beqaa valley is holding most of the Syrians. There is then of course a huge amount of support, because of local associations or non-governmental organisations in the region that have supported Syrians, mainly through helping them to access education.
In Jordan, other than the Zaatari and Azraq refugee camps that still exist, most Syrian refugees are in urban contexts. Turkey closed down all of its camps a few years ago and has really promoted the self-settlement of Syrians along that southern border.
There is a distinction. In some cases, it is urban. Certainly, for assistance to Lebanon, I think it is mainly rural.
Q84 Alex Ballinger: You mentioned the Jordan compact, Professor Chatty. If I remember it, there was also an element that allowed refugees to work in the garment sector, in manufacturing, although the numbers that did that may be debatable.
I am interested in a bit more detail on why you think that was not a successful model. Can you maybe compare that to the larger EU programmes in Turkey? I am not sure whether you were going to say that was more successful, but could you do a comparison of the types of support and how that worked well or did not work well?
Dawn Chatty: The Jordan compact in particular was very focused on a report that was put forward by Alex Betts and Paul Collier. Paul Collier is an economist who knows Africa very well. Alex is a colleague of mine, but I have to say does not know the middle east, and didn’t know the middle east.
The compact was going to fail right away—it was recognised by many Jordanians, but there were many other elements to the compact, in terms of the money that would be provided to the Jordanian Government if they went through. It was meant to provide work permits for Syrians to work legally in Jordan, but only in agriculture, construction and in free zones, where they had these factories.
There was kind of an assumption that Syrian women would leave their families all day and go and sit in a factory—Syrian women are not going to do that; it is not going to happen. And it did not happen.
Even in terms of the sign-up for legal work permits, it was very limited. I have forgotten the numbers, but they were aiming at 200,000 or 300,000 and for the longest time, I think it remained at around 50,000. That was for reasons that differed from the same kind of effort that was made in Turkey—where a lot of people hiring Syrians did not want formal work permits because then it meant paying higher taxes and so on.
The Jordan compact came out of some academic research that was not contextualised to Jordan, which is always a big issue. There was a rush to do something in 2015, 2016, and so you had a project that did not really work in the way it was supposed to work.
Q85 Alex Ballinger: Across Europe, including in the UK, the big debate after the civil war was about the number of Syrian refugees who made the trip beyond the bordering countries to countries such as the UK. A lot was made of the support given to Turkey, in particular, to prevent that and help refugees stay close to Syria and get the support they needed in the neighbouring countries. Was that an effective policy? Was there a link between the ODA—the international aid—that was provided to countries like Turkey and the migration that came across into Europe?
Dawn Chatty: Definitely there was. In 2015, 2016, there was the EU-Turkish compact—whatever you want to call it—which slowed down the onward movement, but that onward movement could not have been totally prevented, even if you doubled the amount given to Turkey. At that time, Turkey had a number of very good refugee camps near the border, but a lot of people were self-settled.
You have to remember what was happening in Syria at the time. At that point, ISIS—the Islamic State—had taken over about 80% of the country, and Russia had come in to support the regime and was really upping the aerial bombardments in the urban centres. Many families, even those in Turkey, thought, “We are not going to be able to go back any time soon,” and they decided to move on. About 800,000 were welcomed in Germany, and large numbers in Scandinavia. They could not get into the UK. The UK had its vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, under which it agreed to take 20,000 over a period of five years. That is a really minuscule number, compared with the number who found asylum in Germany.
I do not know that it was such a disaster for Germany. Some reports have come out from the German Government showing that Syrians who received asylum in Germany had the opportunity to start working after six months. They started paying tax much earlier than had been expected, so within four years most of them were paying tax and were paying back the cost that had been spent on them.
That kind of funding can never replace what is happening on the ground. Displaced Syrians recognised in 2015, 2016 that this was not going to be over very quickly. They felt that the regime was going to remain, or that it would fall to ISIS, which was perhaps going to be just as bad. And then it stopped. That was only one year, and in the next year the numbers were greatly reduced. Maybe you can say that that was because the programme was in effect, so those who felt that they really had to move on did, but it was not as though you had another 800,000 or 1 million every year after 2015, 2016. There was a huge drop in numbers coming to Europe afterwards.
Q86 Alex Ballinger: In a very short period, as you say. Thank you. Professor Brun, I want to move on slightly. Many refugees have lived in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan for a generation, and some have had their entire education in those countries. Could you tell us a bit about the type of education that they have been able to get? Has that enabled younger Syrians to have the skills that they might need to return to Syria or carry on their lives in those countries?
Cathrine Brun: That is a big question, and we have done some research looking at that. For example, in one project we compared what happened in Lebanon, Turkey and Australia. We looked at different kinds of countries and at how different programmes have been working. We saw that the question of how you are included in the national education system eventually means something for how you succeed. We give a lot of credit to Turkey here. It had a more gradual approach to get people into the education system. In Australia, it was much more of a quick integration into the national system. In Lebanon, you have had second shifts, as you also had in Jordan.
Q87 Chair: How many Syrians were there going to Australia? You talk about them being integrated. What are the numbers?
Cathrine Brun: I cannot tell you from the top of my head and I am not going to try to come up with a number. I can give it later. The point is that in what we often call northern states or in Australia you integrate people much more from the beginning and with a more long-term perspective and think of them as part of the education system. In Lebanon and Jordan they are included in the education system, but it is in second shifts. It is shorter hours than the normal shifts and often teachers with less competence.
Q88 Alex Ballinger: So Jordanian children go to school first and then there is another shift of Syrian children going to school?
Cathrine Brun: Yes. That is in some schools because not all schools have this. Currently about 40% of Syrian children in Lebanon go to school. A huge number of kids are not going to school and most of them do not reach secondary school. That means that we have a lost generation in terms of education. That is not a good sign in terms of contributing to rebuilding Syria. Because of labour restrictions, Syrian teachers cannot work in Lebanon or Jordan, which means that there is deskilling of the labour force that could go back to Syria.
I would like to come back to aid here. Similar to the Jordan compact there was a Lebanon compact. Maybe more could have been done from donors as well to think about how we build the competence and capacity of both the host societies and the refugees in exile. Particularly when it comes to Lebanon, Syrian children have lost out quite dramatically. That is going to be a challenge for how we think about return as well.
Dawn Chatty: That is a really important point because throughout the world, particularly in Lebanon and also somewhat in Jordan, the refugees or the displaced Syrians settle in the country’s poorest communities. It is just absolutely calling out for the extension of aid to the host community and the refugees in it—especially in terms of education, because Lebanon does not have a very strong public education system nor a very strong public health system. This kind of aid would be of benefit to Lebanon and its people as well as the refugees.
Cathrine Brun: To add one more point to that, again, it comes back to aid. UK aid has been quite important in supporting education in Lebanon and Jordan. The problem is a little that aid has contributed to somehow create a parallel system rather than strengthening the national system. As Dawn says, in Lebanon, about 70% of Lebanese go to private schools and 30% or less go to public school. It is the public school system that is the last resort for many Lebanese, and it is also where Syrian refugees end up.
Unfortunately, aid has not been able to strengthen that system, but rather in many ways created almost a parallel system. There are many reasons for that including low trust in Government in terms of handling funds and so on. However, there are ways of thinking about how to strengthen that system. That is one of the things that we need to discuss because maybe 700,000 Syrians have gone back from Lebanon to Syria, but there are still a lot of children in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. We cannot forget about them, and we need to think how we strengthen those systems to prepare for a return in the long term. I think that is a very important point.
Q89 Jessica Toale: I appreciate the point about skills deterioration in education. I wonder if there are any examples from other sectors—perhaps healthcare, where Syrian doctors have been able to practice—where you have seen the skills maintained and the population supported?
Dawn Chatty: I can speak to the health system. Doctors and nurses are not permitted to work in either Jordan or Lebanon. There have been some exceptions in Turkey—funnily enough, because healthcare is provided by the Government. The Turkish Government have permitted doctors and nurses who were certified outside of Syria to practise because most Turkish doctors cannot speak Arabic and so they needed them. That is normally in the south of the country. In Jordan and Lebanon a number of studies have shown that doctors have sometimes been able to work informally—I am going to say illegally—in existing clinics under the supervision of Lebanese doctors, who also have to be very careful because they are not meant to be employing them.
Q90 Chair: On education, my impression was that Dr Chatty was implying quite heavily that one of the ways to encourage people to go back into Syria is to have an education system that parents would be confident in and that the concern was that, given the trend of the current Government, the education system might be very restrictive. Is that your view?
Dawn Chatty: There is currently a very big debate in Syria because the transitional Government are suggesting that the curriculum— besides removing everything related to the Ba’ath party—change the cartoons in primary schools so that any image of a woman is with a hijab, which is not how Syrian women always dress. It also suggests removing some of the elements that promote an understanding of democracy and how democracy functions. That is being deeply challenged by Syrians who remained in the country as well as those who have recently gone back. There is a huge debate. I think it would be wonderful if European countries could help—although I am not going to say swing the debate, because obviously, in the end, it is what the Syrians decide on. There is a very loud minority and that is trying to make changes that a lot of the population are not happy about.
Q91 Chair: So there is a readiness? Part of our inquiry is looking at what the Foreign Office could do as a positive assistance to Syria. We have heard, and I think that we will hear more, that part of it should be an investment in agriculture and making sure that people can go back to the fields.
Dawn Chatty: Electricity is also in very short supply. There are also landmines so agricultural fields have to be cleared.
Chair: So agriculture, landmines, electricity, water and education.
Dawn Chatty: What is really important is that there needs to be a much more nuanced view of Syria today. The FCDO advisory has the whole of Syria red, which means that we cannot send our doctoral students to Syria. The university will not allow it—they say that it is too much of a risk. Whereas in Lebanon it is very nuanced and there are areas of Lebanon where you can go. If we really want to know what is happening on the ground, it cannot all just be from secondary evidence from our students coming back or what we are reading. We need to look at how Damascus is perfectly safe and parts of Aleppo are also perfectly safe. There are certainly areas where they think that there are ISIS cells, but we can keep those marked red.
Q92 Chair: You think that Damascus and Aleppo are safe.
Dawn Chatty: Yes, absolutely safe. Also, Daraa—except that the Jordanian air force struck it a couple of days ago.
Q93 Chair: And travelling between the two?
Dawn Chatty: No problem at all. The borders are easy to traverse. I think it costs you $100 for a visa at the border. You do not have to do it in advance. A lot of my doctoral students have gone back and forth, but researchers need to go back.
Q94 Chair: Have you?
Dawn Chatty: I have not yet been. I was meant to go last week, but I ended up having to do something else in Amman. But I would have gone—it is not a problem. I am planning to go next year.
Q95 Edward Morello: Professor Toros, I would like to return to the topic of the camps. When you gave evidence to us last year, you talked about the inherent risk of the security of the camps being removed and the camps collapsing. The Syrian Government obviously took over responsibility for security. You mentioned before that al-Roj is still open and al-Hawl was closed. Was that an organised closure? Can you talk us through what happened there? You mentioned that 5,000 of the detainees were removed by the US to Iraq, so what did that closure look like? How many detainees, to the best of your knowledge, were there in that camp, minus the 5,000? What happened to the remaining?
Harmonie Toros: The closure was absolutely not organised. It was the result of fighting between Syrian Government forces and at the time the SDF—the Kurdish forces who were controlling the camp. It is not only al-Hawl where women and children primarily were being held, but it is also prisons and detention centres for juvenile boys. A lot of these ended up falling apart in chaotic and very dangerous circumstances for the people who were inside. The US, and I imagine other countries, were particularly worried about the men in the prisons, and therefore, it is the men and some boys—a lot of boys; there were quite a few boys in the men’s prisons anyway—who were brought over to Iraq. About 5,700 of them were brought over to Iraq.
Q96 Chair: When you say boys, what age?
Harmonie Toros: The youngest I have heard of being brought over was 12—young boys. We have to consider that we are now in 2026; the last bastion of ISIS fell in 2019, so if they are 12 now, we are not talking about fighting-age men in any shape or form. A lot of the women and children in al-Hawl were actually Syrian. The Syrians have reintegrated in various ways within the community and third-country nationals—women and children—were brought to Roj. Some were lost, so it is possible, if we are looking at third-country nationals, that that includes British citizens. We just do not know where they are. They are unaccounted for, and their safety is one of the main concerns we had, but if we are looking at security issues, that is also a question.
Q97 Edward Morello: Can you give us some ballpark figures? When you are saying that 5,700 were moved to Iraq, was that not exclusively from al-Hawl, but from other prisons as well?
Harmonie Toros: It was mainly from the prisons.
Q98 Edward Morello: What was the rough ballpark population of al-Hawl at the point it collapsed?
Harmonie Toros: Towards the end, it was tens of thousands.
Q99 Edward Morello: Tens of thousands and all those are unaccounted for?
Harmonie Toros: Yes. Most of them were Syrians, and there were some Iraqis as well, but in terms of third-country nationals, we are talking about much smaller figures, and that would include European citizens and citizens from all over the world. They were moved to Roj. From the images, you could see that it was complete chaos. Now Roj is still actually administered by Kurdish forces, and there are negotiations going on between the Syrian Government and the Kurdish forces on what will happen to Roj.
Q100 Edward Morello: Do we know how many people are held at al-Roj?
Harmonie Toros: Several thousand. We believe there are more than 40 British citizens. The conditions in the camps, particularly the violence, have worsened according to most people I have spoken to. What is happening is that once international NGOs and UN officials leave the camp in the evenings, there are retaliatory raids because of protests during the day. This violence has escalated from what I understand from people who have been to the camp and are in contact with people in the camp. There are severe beatings of children and women. There are children being detained and refusal to return them to their mothers. There are increased reports of ransom being asked for the children to be returned to their families. The situation is escalating. The people who are living there face uncertainty. Because al-Hawl collapsed the way it did, they do not know what is going to happen to Roj. They know that there is a negotiation going on, but they do not know what the result will be.
Q101 Edward Morello: When you say, “The negotiation that is going on,” is that between the Syrian Government and the Kurdish regional Government about who runs the camp or is it because the Syrian Government envisage closing that down?
Harmonie Toros: I have heard two separate things. One is whether the Syrian Government will take over control of the camp. The other is that the camp will be closed down and the inhabitants of the camps will be brought possibly to Idlib, which was a stronghold of HTS before they took over Damascus.
Q102 Edward Morello: With the aim of reintegrating them into society, or to a new prison?
Harmonie Toros: My understanding would be to a new detention centre. The idea of reintegrating them is very difficult because a lot of them are not Syrians, they are third country nationals—British, French and so on.
Q103 Edward Morello: Since you last came to see us, which I think in was January last year, how many people have been repatriated to their country of origin out of Syria?
Harmonie Toros: I cannot tell you exactly how many have been repatriated. Not huge amounts. I can give the figure later. I cannot give it off the top of my head.
Q104 Edward Morello: How many British citizens?
Harmonie Toros: To my knowledge, the last repatriation of British citizens was in April 2025. There is a tracker that says one woman and three children were repatriated at that time, but there has been no repatriation since to my knowledge.
Q105 Edward Morello: To your knowledge, those were the only British citizens repatriated in 2025?
Harmonie Toros: That is correct.
Q106 Edward Morello: And what is your estimate of how many British citizens, or those eligible for British passports, are still held in Syrian camps?
Harmonie Toros: We are talking slightly over 40, a large majority of them children. I think it is important to say that the adults, the women, most likely many of them have been stripped of citizenship but not the children. The question of the stripping of citizenship is a whole other really difficult question, but certainly the children have not been stripped of citizenship and are recognised by everyone as British citizens.
Q107 Alex Ballinger: You cannot tell us the numbers, but can you tell us which other countries have been repatriating citizens from the camps, and how their approaches differ from what the UK is doing?
Harmonie Toros: France has repatriated a lot of citizens; Norway has; the Netherlands; Belgium; Australia has repatriated I believe all its citizens; Finland recently found a young boy in prison in Iraq and they repatriated him; and the Americans are very, very adamant, so they have repatriated everyone and are very adamant that everyone should repatriate their citizens—they have been pushing for that very strongly.
Q108 Chair: Do they continue to? I know the Americans repatriated years ago. Under Donald Trump is the American Government still pushing for it?
Harmonie Toros: Yes, absolutely they are, very strongly. I know we are looking at Syria here but it is very connected to Iraq and I think we are going to find ourselves in a situation with Iraq. Iraq has said that in respect of men and boys for whom they do not have any evidence to charge or who are seen to be not guilty, they will want the countries of origin to repatriate those citizens. They do not want to keep people in jail who should not be in jail. So there is a whole complicated aid financial agreement that is being negotiated with various countries to keep the nationals that are being sentenced to terms. We have to think that a lot of these people have already served seven, eight or 10 years.
Q109 Alex Ballinger: Certainly for children that does seem to be particularly egregious. What are the Government saying for the reason they are not attempting to repatriate in some of the cases where there is clearly no criminal connection or they are underage?
Harmonie Toros: The position of the British Government has until recently been, and still is, that in Syria they have no consular representation and therefore cannot get in touch with these people. I think that was not tenable three years ago when I came the first time, or a year and a half ago, and is certainly not tenable now with sustained and regular contact with Syrian authorities. In Iraq we have an embassy, so there is no reason to not be able to provide consular services to our citizens.
Chair: And other countries have repatriated.
Harmonie Toros: Absolutely. There is an argument of a security concern, of keeping Britain safe. The UK—
Q110 Chair: They also argue, don’t they, that they have stripped most of the women, if not all of them, of their British nationality? Although they cannot strip the children of their British nationality, they say that they will take the children, but only if the women give them up.
Harmonie Toros: I am not sure that has been said publicly. The British Government’s public position is, “We will support orphans and unattached or unaccompanied minors,” but these minors are not unattached. They have mothers and family. The difficulty is that you can imagine a child whose only attachment and link to anybody in the world has been their mother, in difficult, if not terrifying, circumstances.
The conditions in Roj have been described by the UN as akin to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. That is what we are talking about. The idea that we are asking children to leave their mothers behind cannot be seen as being in their interest; the only connection they have to the world has been their mother. It is a particularly difficult circumstance.
I think the question of security is important to answer. The UK boasts one of the most sophisticated systems in the world for counter-terrorism and for preventing and countering violent extremism. I have heard British officials say it is one of the best. There is no reason why we cannot handle 40 people.
Dan Carden: We have representatives of the Governments of Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey coming on after you. I wanted to ask more about the geopolitics of the new Syria.
Chair: I think you were not in the room at the time, but the Jordanian representatives are not able to come.
Q111 Dan Carden: Thank you, Chair. Thinking of the regional powers in the area, I wanted to ask about the importance of Islam. Could you tell us a bit about the role of Islam from Assad to now? I am not an expert, but I understand that Assad ran a secular state from a Shi’a sect, and now the Government and the majority of the people of Syria are Sunni. What can you tell me about the importance of that and what it might mean for Syria’s relationships in the region?
Dawn Chatty: It is a complicated question, because I am going to say that the west has been overly concerned with Islam in terms of how a country operates. Under the Assad regime, it was supposedly a secular state, but it was also one determined to keep all its minorities on its side, claiming that it was protecting them—but I will question that later on.
The problem now is this Government in transition. Many Syrians want to see a kind of return to the—I am going to call them almost mythical—democratic years of Syria in the 1950s, when they had a Parliament and the original wishes of the country were that only the president had to be Muslim, but otherwise it was a secular state. That was actually distorted.
Many Syrians who have never left, and many who have gone back or who are in the diaspora but are very deeply engaged with the shape of the transition that is going to come, are really interested and concerned in seeing that the multicultural, multi-religious nature of Syria remains. I chose not to use the word “mosaic”, because a mosaic tends to be like the tessera—you think of harsh borders between groups—and that is not what many Syrians want.
There is still a great deal of suspicion about this transitional Government. It was Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham that managed Aleppo and got a lot of support from Turkey to oust the Assad regime. This Government in transition have a number of very extremist elements, but that is not the entirety of that Government. Right now, this is exactly what the Syrian people, both in the country and in the diaspora, are struggling with: trying to maintain a country where you cannot change the population numbers, where the Sunni element is very strong. Although you have to remember that the Assad regime was really trying to undermine that; they were quite happy to see the Sunni element leave and not come back.
There is a real effort now to try to work with the Alawites in the north and a lot of negotiations are taking place to try to work with the Druze in the south, although the Druze in the south have not really changed their nature in the last 100 years; there has always been this kind of struggle. There are many Christian elements in Syria: very strong, very well-educated, Greek Orthodox, very important to the running of the Government. There is fear but there is also a kind of cautious optimism that they will be able to maintain a country that respects all its minorities.
Harmonie Toros: From my perspective—I will answer based on my expertise on the camps—it is important not to focus in particular on the question of Islam or Islamism. A lot has been said about the inhabitants of the camps and how they are particularly radical. The people I have spoken to who visited the camps did not find that. They found young boys who were trying to show them various dance moves. It was not at all the sort of stone-throwing image that we tend to see.
Q112 Dan Carden: To be clear, I was thinking more about the Government, their relations with their neighbouring countries and the stability of Syria going forward.
Harmonie Toros: My argument for a long time has been that armed groups—HTS was an armed group before it took over the Government—do not have a soul. They will evolve depending on their interests. Everything that can be done to encourage the current Government to move toward norms that they and everybody else feel comfortable with is a plus. There is a lot of worry from many people that HTS is pretending to be something that it is actually not—that it has this hardline soul inside it that will eventually be revealed. I do not see armed groups that way. I think armed groups can be offered incentives, particularly when in power, to adapt—for example, to open towards minorities and towards women’s rights—and to evolve in a certain direction if the right incentives are put forward.
Dawn Chatty: On a positive note, many Syrians are confident that they are protesting rules and laws that are being suggested and their protests are being listened to; they are not being disappeared; they are not being arrested. That is a kind of freedom that gives them a sense of dignity. As long as those protests are not shut down and the Government listen, I think they will be moving in the direction that Europe and the rest of the world will not be too unhappy with.
Chair: Thank you for coming to give evidence before us and for sharing your expertise. It has been an extremely interesting session. Thank you very much indeed. That concludes our first panel. If there is anything you would like to add, or that you feel you have not covered today, please write to the Committee about it. I will briefly suspend the session while we change over to the next panel.
Sitting suspended.
On resuming—
Examination of witnesses
Witnesses: HE Farah Berry, HE Haneen Sayed and HE Osman Koray Ertaş.
Chair: Welcome back to this Foreign Affairs Committee session on Syria. Our second panel comprises representatives of Lebanon and Turkey. Your Excellencies, I am really grateful to you for giving us the time to join us today. Unfortunately, the Jordanian ambassador had to return home at short notice, so he is not available to join us. Can we start with people introducing themselves?
Haneen Sayed: Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you, and thank you for inviting me. My name is Haneen Sayed, and I am the Minister of Social Affairs of Lebanon. Our Cabinet came in in February 2025, and we are still here.
Farah Berry: I am Farah Berry, the ambassador of Lebanon. Thank you for this session today, because the issue of Syrian refugees is very significant to Lebanon and the region.
Osman Koray Ertaş: I am Osman Koray Ertaş, the ambassador of Türkiye. Thank you, Madam Chair, for inviting me to appear before your honourable Committee.
Q113 Chair: We thought we would not have opening statements to the Committee, but instead have an opening question. Can each of you tell us your country’s thoughts and concerns about Syria, as the new Government continue to emerge after years of a brutal dictatorship? We have bit of a blip on the system, so I might begin with the Turkish ambassador and then come back to the Minister of Social Affairs.
Osman Koray Ertaş: Since the outbreak of the conflict in Syria in 2011, we have hosted millions of Syrians fleeing the war. We have faced one of the largest mass movements of people since the second world war, and responded with a humanitarian approach. For years, we were one of the world’s largest refugee-hosting nations, according to UN figures. At its peak, Türkiye hosted more than 3.7 million Syrians in-country, and today we continue to provide protection to about 2.2 million Syrians, in line with our international obligations and humanitarian principles.
Our approach has two dimensions: supporting those who wish to return voluntarily to Syria, and making that sustainable, while continuing to assist vulnerable Syrians who choose to remain in Türkiye. Our efforts are focused on supporting Syria’s stability, recovery, reconstruction and national unity. These are also key to ensuring sustainable voluntary returns.
The geopolitical situation in the Middle East is quite bleak—from Iran to the Gulf, to Yemen and to Palestine—and the ongoing conflict threatens all of us, be it in the name of energy security or food security, among others. Against that gloomy background, Syria stands as one of the few sources of hope in the region; that is how we see it.
There are a lot of challenges, and we are aware that they are immense. As a responsible neighbouring country of Syria, we continue to do our best to support Syria to become a stable and secure country that is also inclusive. Syria needs our support, and we want to see a Syria that is at peace with itself, its neighbours and the international community. Such a Syria is also essential for sustainable voluntary returns, and we will continue to work closely with the UK and our regional partners and allies towards a secure and a stable Syria.
Q114 Chair: Have there been benefits for Turkey from having Syrian refugees within the country?
Osman Koray Ertaş: It is obvious that, initially, there was a huge influx. We found millions of people in our country, and it was a challenging period. But as time has passed, Syrians have contributed to our economy and opened businesses; we gave them access to employment and the workforce, and we eventually reaped that benefit.
There were also a lot of initial social challenges, such as with security, as well as economic challenges. It has also always been a thorny political issue; it was one of the biggest issues in the last presidential election in 2023, for example. Now we have come to a period where people at least have hope for their country, and they have started to return home. The ones who choose to remain in Türkiye are, as I say, integrating into the society and opening their businesses, so we also continue our efforts to increase the social cohesion of those Syrians who have remained in Türkiye.
Q115 Chair: Do you have an estimate of how many Syrians have now adopted Turkish nationality?
Osman Koray Ertaş: I do not have an exact figure, but there are Syrians who have acquired citizenship. I have an exact number for Syrians living in Türkiye, which is 2.2 million, and the number who have voluntarily returned since 2024 is more than 770,000.
Q116 Edward Morello: Your Excellency, you briefly talked about some of the economic benefits that Turkey has realised as a result of Syrian refugees. Does Turkey see an economic opportunity in Syria itself, as it becomes more stable, investable and obviously needs considerable help in rebuilding?
Osman Koray Ertaş: Definitely. As I say, there are huge opportunities if we can help Syria to once again become a stable and secure country, and there will be a lot of economic opportunities. We are now trying to establish industrial zones in both Aleppo and Damascus, and we try to have strong connections between our business organisations. We also try to connect the Syria Britain Business Council with our business council, so that we can have joint events.
Trade will eventually increase, but everything depends on the right investments inside Syria, especially in essential infrastructure such as airports, power plants, railroads and highways. Syria also offers a huge opportunity in terms of connectivity. After what we have witnessed in the Gulf and in Bab al-Mandab, we definitely need alternative sources of transportation. We already have what we call the Hejaz railway on the table, which literally connects the Gulf through Syria to Europe via Türkiye. We also have plans to connect Syria through pipelines. There is already an operational pipeline between our border city Kilis and the Syrian city on the other side. Natural gas is flowing from Türkiye to these regions; that is actually generating most of the electricity, which is fundamental to basic services.
Q117 Edward Morello: Are those creating job opportunities for Syrians in Syria, or are they just Turkish businesses?
Osman Koray Ertaş: They are. This is one of the objectives that we are focusing on to increase livelihoods inside Syria; otherwise, people will not have any hope for return. That is why we are trying to create these industrial zones, to open business and job opportunities for people, especially younger generations, who should see hope for their future to work inside the country. Our businesses are literally integrating into one another, especially in the south-east region of our country. Gaziantep is a major city in our south-east. It is a production hub and an industrial city. It already has very strong connections with the border towns, especially Aleppo and Damascus. All the people who return will continue to be a very strong bridge of connection between the two nations, and economically, because they are bilingual already, they will continue to be a strong force in increasing this economic partnership.
Q118 Alex Ballinger: Your Excellency, Turkey continues to maintain quite a large military presence in the north of Syria, so you will have a good overview of the security situation there. Could you give us, first, your assessment of the security situation, particularly for refugees who might be returning, and what you think the future of that Turkish military force will be? Will that be maintained there for a long time?
Osman Koray Ertaş: Security is key for voluntary returns to be sustainable; otherwise, people will not go back to their home countries. Damascus is pretty secure. That is what we know. Aleppo is the same. Major cities are more or less in a decent security environment. We are seeing that.
I would like to take this opportunity to give some background about Türkiye’s military presence in Syria, because in the initial announcement of this inquiry, Türkiye was put in the same basket with Israel as two countries with a military presence in Syria that destabilises Syria. That is disappointing for us, because Türkiye and Syria stand on literally the opposite side of the equation. We see Syria as a friend. We want to see a successful Syria and a stable Syria whereas, unfortunately, Israel sees Syria as an enemy and wants to see a failed state. Obviously, we, including the UK, have to work hard to convince Israelis that a failed state in Syria will harm the national interests of Israel. Hopefully, after the formation of the new Government, Israel and Syria can get together again and reach an understanding.
Our military presence in Syria was and is with the consent of the Syrian Government. They are now mostly focusing on training activities. Obviously, eventually, when the security situation gets better, and in close co-ordination with the Syrian authorities, we will decide the fate of our troops. From day 1, we have favoured and strongly supported the territorial integrity, unity and sovereignty of Syria, unlike Israel. We have no intention whatsoever on the territorial integrity of Syria itself. As a matter of fact, the Syrian Government request that our troop presence continue, especially in this transition period when the security situation is still fragile in some regions. Thanks to our presence, actually, the voluntary returns started earlier—much before December ’24. People went voluntarily to the regions that we cleared from Daesh, ISIS and PKK terrorism.
On the civilian side, we have shouldered important responsibilities like offering postal services, education and health. We operated schools and medical services. We started gradually to transfer them to the Syrians. The pace of the transfer is decided by the Syrian Government and authorities. For example, postal services are no longer under Turkish control. From very early on, we transferred the control of the border gates. We want to transfer all these civilian institutions to the Syrian authorities, but we are there to support them.
Chair: Can we move on to Lebanon? We can come back and pick up some more questions later, but I want to move to John.
Q119 Sir John Whittingdale: In terms of proportion, the influx of refugees into Lebanon was greater than almost anywhere else. Can you tell us what impact that had? What measures have the Lebanese Government had to take to receive the refugees? What is your attitude towards them potentially returning to Syria?
Haneen Sayed: You rightly mentioned, Sir, that Lebanon has been hosting since 2013 the largest per capita number of Syrian refugees. We had about 1.5 million refugees alongside a population of 4 million Lebanese. While Turkey has the largest number, as the ambassador mentioned, Lebanon’s number per capita is very high. We are the highest in the world, in terms of all refugee-hosting countries. That has had an enormous impact, as you can imagine.
Lebanon has unfortunately been having a series of economic downturns, financial crises and wars. It is very hard for the economy and social structure to support such a large load, especially on the services side. On schools, for example, from at some point in 2015 until recently, our schools had more than 50% Syrian students in them. On health, hospitals and primary healthcare centres were very congested. Then on water and electricity, electricity is universally provided, so by definition, that meant that a big subsidy from the Government was going to the refugee population.
Of course, as was mentioned with Turkey, adding population always has some positive impact on economic growth. As an economist, I know that. When I was at the World Bank, we measured that in the case of Lebanon, but we also found that, even given the positive impact of an added population through consumption and the like, the net effect remains negative for a fragile country like Lebanon.
That includes the labour market. There was a huge downward pressure on wages. The informal sector more than doubled, and we are still living that today. As much as the Government have tried to formalise the sector, it has been very difficult. You can imagine that it is not an easy feat to formalise employment. The net effect on services has been very straining, even on the labour market, where we know that Syrians take up jobs that Lebanese do not.
Before 2011, the Lebanese economy relied—and it still does—on foreign workers for many sectors, like agriculture and construction, and Syrian labour was a big part of that. For example, we know that around 350,000 to 400,000 Syrian workers were already in Lebanon, sometimes going in and out seasonally for the agricultural season. But after 2011, they brought their families, because they were running from persecution under the Assad regime. With the presence of families, their population in Lebanon has grown larger and larger in the last 14 years, and that is what puts a big strain on our social services and infrastructure.
Of course, you will ask about the international community, which has come to our aid from early on, in 2013, when the Government, with the United Nations and the donors, including the UK, organised frameworks of response. Every year, we would go to Brussels to put our needs on the table and they would be funded, but that funding was always partial, and in the last few years, we have been getting increasingly less funding. In fact, we are just about to launch our appeal for next year for what we call the Lebanon response plan—the LRP—and we have already been told by donors to expect much less than before.
That funding has helped—for example, it has helped to finance the cost of education for Syrian refugees; the UK has been a big contributor to that, which we thank it for—but as I mentioned, international funding has increasingly been going down as a result of various factors and global changes. That means, de facto, that the Government budget, which is very weak at this point, has to pick up the cost. For example, we have been told by UN health agencies that there is no more health funding for refugees in Lebanon.
On measures and the response, the Government did a lot: as I mentioned, we opened schools in the afternoon and provided healthcare. We did not set up formal camps, simply because in Lebanon, there are historical issues with those and formal camps do not have a good history. Informal settlements sprung up, but unfortunately, the conditions were very bad. We supported work on gender-based violence and child protection, and with the UN and donors, we implemented many such programmes, to at least provide a basic, dignified life for Syrian refugees.
I must say that when I was in Syria three weeks ago, I met some Syrian refugees who had been in Lebanon but had gone back to Syria. They were very positive and happy when reminiscing about their experience in Lebanon—in fact, one 16-year-old girl, who had moved to Lebanon when she was two years old but was now back in Syria, said that she wanted to come back to Lebanon, and that she really felt that it was her country. Despite some of the noise heard outside, I believe that most of the refugees in Lebanon were able to have a basic, dignified life—I am by no means saying that it was luxurious; poverty is still very high.
My last point is on what we have done since the fall of the Assad regime. Of course, the first thing we did was re-establish the relationship with the new Syrian Government. Given the sea change in Syria, we said that most of the refugees could go back, so there are no more political refugees, if you will. We discussed with the Syrian Government what we have called a return plan, which our Government passed a year ago. That return plan essentially says that ultimately, refugees are not entitled and should go home. Of course, there will be those who need to remain, and those who want to remain, as economic migrants, to work—as I mentioned, there was always a large number of Syrians working in Lebanon—and we will grant them work permits and residency so that they are legal.
We asked the international community to help us with the return process: basically, to provide financial incentives and transportation to help the families to go back. Through the IOM—the International Organisation for Migration—and the UNHCR, with support from the EU and other countries, we designed this return plan. To be specific, it is $100 per family member, and then $600 is given to the family when they are in Syria. For a family of five, it is $500 in Lebanon and $600 when they get to Syria to help them get started.
We also instituted non-financial administrative measures. We removed their obligation to pay fees for overstaying. Most of them were here illegally, so by definition they accumulated penalties. We removed those penalties and we also said, “If you want to come back legally, you can. We are not blacklisting you for having overstayed.”
We put those measures in place. The numbers are a little hard to pin down but, as a result of that, between 650,000 and 700,000 Syrian refugees have gone back since we started the plan a year ago. The process is dignified and sustainable, because they are going back with their families. Almost 90% go back to their areas of origin, so in that sense it is sustainable. It is also a safe return: as I mentioned, it is organised with the help of the UN. The process is continuing. It has slowed down, because most people who wanted to go back and could do so have gone back.
I was in Syria yesterday on a high-level visit to speak with the Syrian authorities about that point. We know that Syria has a long way to go in reconstruction and recovery. We support their call for the international community to help and put effort behind that, because stability, security, prosperity and growth for Syria also means stability, security and growth for Lebanon.
The opposite is also true: if Lebanon is stable, secure and growing, it helps Syria. Although we are a smaller country, our private sector is very active and robust. For example, it was running the banks in Syria for many years. Many investments also come from the Lebanese into Syria, so it is in our mutual interest to help Syria to grow and reconstruct. It is a win-win situation.
Ultimately, we want to reach a situation with the refugees where the families can go back safely and with dignity, and then the breadwinner can become an economic migrant who is legalised, so they can go back and forth and provide an income for their family from their work in Lebanon. I will stop there.
Q120 Sir John Whittingdale: Thank you. That was hugely helpful. You answered not just my initial question but several of the others that we wanted to raise. You said you met a refugee who had returned to Syria but said that they missed Lebanon. To what extent do you think there will be a number who simply do not want to return because they have made their home in Lebanon and that is where they want to stay?
Haneen Sayed: Yes, for sure there will be people like that. We need to work on that if they have a reason to stay or a job. One thing that I should clarify is that, unlike some European countries or even Turkey, Lebanon, by our constitution, is not what we call a country of refuge, in the sense of nationalising them. Of course, we accept many refugees. We have had Iraqi refugees and Palestinian refugees—that is refugee population that we have had the longest—but we are not a country that gives citizenship and nationalises. We do that only on a very exceptional basis.
There are many reasons for that—partly the constitutional make-up and so on—which are not worth going through here. So it is not an option to nationalise large numbers of the Syrians who are here. If they can legally get a work permit and make a living here and the like, of course they are welcome. That benefits Lebanon as well as them and Syria.
Q121 Abtisam Mohamed: I have a question about what the UK could be doing to contribute. The Minister helpfully referenced the Lebanese response plan and the support that has been provided by the UK through UN officials. If I may come to you first, Your Excellency, is there anything that the UK could be doing more of to support Lebanon in relation to Syria going forward?
Farah Berry: First and foremost, we thank the UK for its contribution, especially during difficult circumstances. We hope to support returns and reintegration and to help finance essential services in Syria, such as schools, hospitals and housing, so that the returns are sustainable, because the issue is not just about crossing the border; people need to live in dignity.
At the same time, we need to continue supporting vulnerable Lebanese families and the displaced in Lebanon. We also need to help our social institutions such as hospitals and schools, because the past 15 years have been taxing on them, especially with the economic collapse; and our security forces and the Lebanese army to help them better control the border, taking from your experience as well.
Q122 Abtisam Mohamed: Your Excellency, Türkiye has been developing a range of infrastructure support in Syria. What could the UK do to support that?
Osman Koray Ertaş: We have been in close contact with the UK on all aspects of Syria. I have been in regular contact with the UK Syria envoy, who has now become your ambassador in Yemen. Just last week, our Deputy Minister was here just for consultations on Syria and how we can work together to support Syria’s transition and the rebuilding of the country. Our development agencies are in touch—TİKA is our development agency, and it is in talks with our colleagues at the FCDO.
We have to work together, especially on financial services, where the UK has specific expertise, as well as on, obviously, education and critical infrastructures, including larger ones such as the airport. We have to support the new Government in their transition efforts, as well as their efforts to rebuild the country. We will focus on project-based, specific examples where we can work together.
Q123 Alex Ballinger: This question is slightly connected to what we were talking about before, Your Excellency, which was the Kurdish armed forces or militias and their integration with the Syrian army. From Turkey’s perspective, do you see that as a positive step and perhaps a step towards normalisation of the tensions between the various Kurdish groups and Turkey? Will that be a step towards a more secure and stable environment in the north of Syria?
Osman Koray Ertaş: Of course, we want to see a peaceful transition, and we want to see the Syrian Government in effective control of the entire country, so the deal between the SDF and the Syrian Government was a welcome agreement for us as well. As Türkiye, we have been very supportive of this process from early on.
As you know, in Türkiye, we also have an ongoing political process, which is managed and supervised by our Parliament, with the support of most of the political parties, and that process also helps what is going on inside Syria, in terms of the integration. We continue to monitor the process in a positive way and to support the agreements so that eventually there will be a peaceful transition to a unified state in Syria.
Q124 Alex Ballinger: I think it is a very positive development. The further this process can go towards a sustainable peace between the Kurdish groups and Turkey will be very positive.
Osman Koray Ertaş: Sometimes there is a feeling that Türkiye or the Turkish people are against the Kurds. That narrative is false actually, and politically loaded. Kurds are essential elements of our society, of our country. They own our country, together with other ethnicities. Regardless of any ethnicity, every Turkish citizen belongs to the country.
For years, for decades, we have had a very good relationship with the Kurds of northern Iraq, for example. Today, Erbil is one of the most advanced cities in Iraq, and that is mostly because of that relationship. During that time, Türkiye has campaigned for the restitution of the rights of the Kurds in Syria. We have no issues with the Kurds; our issue for decades has been with PKK terrorism, which has cost tens of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars of financial burden. Hopefully, with these new processes, we will leave the difficult issues behind us and move forward to a peaceful future.
Chair: In the absence of any other questions, I thank the Minister for her time and for giving evidence today. Your evidence was a tour de force. You covered every question we thought we might ask, so thank you very much indeed. Your Excellencies, thank you very much for coming in and for helping us. If you would like to add anything, please write to us and we can add that to your evidence. That concludes the session.