In 2025, the word “voluntary” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Lebanon’s long-awaited national return plan, presented by UNHCR at the April 2025 National Lebanon Response Plan (LRP) Social Stability Sector Working Group meeting, has outlined what appears to be a blueprint for addressing one of the region’s most protracted displacement crises. The plan promises a carefully managed, safe, dignified, and informed return process for displaced Syrians. It is the product of extensive coordination among UN agencies, Lebanese authorities, humanitarian organizations, and regional stakeholders, and aspires to offer solutions that refugees, host communities, and policymakers alike have long sought.

The fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 marked a seismic shift in the Syrian conflict and triggered new waves of displacement and returns. While some saw it as a turning point that could finally resolve one of the world’s most protracted refugee crises, for many Syrians in Lebanon, it introduced a new layer of uncertainty. The lack of clarity on the future governance structure, and the persistence of insecurity in many areas of Syria have complicated the prospect of return. This regime change has not only reshaped donor and host state priorities but has also exposed the fragility of existing protection frameworks for refugees.

Yet even as the plan’s technical sophistication and humanitarian commitments are widely acknowledged, its implementation unfolds in an environment marked by profound political volatility, systemic distrust, and widespread socio-economic precarity. At the heart of the plan lies a promise of voluntariness that is increasingly difficult to uphold amid the complex realities facing displaced Syrians in Lebanon.

Safe Return or Strategic Retreat?

As of March 2025, more than 123,000 Syrians had returned to Syria from Lebanon. Of these, 97,000 returns were verified by UNHCR, with a striking 67 percent assessed to have occurred under duress. This reality starkly contradicts the plan’s stated commitments to safe and informed return. Rather than being motivated by improved conditions or renewed opportunities in Syria, these returns reflect the steady erosion of viable options in Lebanon.

Displaced Syrians in Lebanon face a collapsing economy, deteriorating basic services, restrictive residency policies, and an increasingly hostile political climate. Social hostility has further intensified, fueled by political rhetoric that portrays refugees as security threats or economic burdens. Together, these factors have placed immense pressure on Syrians to consider returning—even when doing so may not be safe or sustainable.

The plan outlines a range of supports to facilitate informed decision-making: return counselling and pre-assessments, voluntary return assessments at Return Centers, “Go-and-See” visits, and financial assistance through a USD 100 cash grant per individual. However, these mechanisms cannot compensate for the overwhelming structural factors driving decisions.

For example, while “Go-and-See” visits allow one adult member of a household to assess living conditions in Syria and provide a one-month, non-renewable Lebanese residency upon return, the visits are facilitated by the very Lebanese security agencies both central to return processes and historically involved in documented restrictive and coercive measures against refugees. This dual role undermines trust and raises concerns about the voluntariness and transparency of the return framework.

Displaced Syrians themselves often express profound mistrust, not only toward the Lebanese and Syrian governments but also toward the humanitarian system. Despite significant aid and protection programming in Lebanon, perceptions of humanitarian actors’ limited capacity to prevent forced returns or advocate effectively for refugee rights have eroded confidence.

Moreover, many refugees fear that once they cross the border into Syria—even for assessment purposes—they risk surveillance or detention, despite political changes following the fall of the Assad regime. Humanitarian actors have acknowledged these fears in their planning assumptions, but the gap between policy and the lived reality of refugees remains wide.

Facilitating Return or Engineering It?

The 2025 return plan reflects an unprecedented level of technical detail and coordination. It incorporates preparatory activities with Lebanese government agencies, capacity building, cross-border coordination with counterparts in Syria, and efforts to secure funding both within host countries and Syria itself. It even includes risk mitigation measures such as protection monitoring, conflict analysis, voluntariness assessments, and complaint mechanisms.

However, these well-intentioned mechanisms may inadvertently facilitate what can be termed “return engineering”—where state-driven political imperatives, rather than genuine voluntariness, shape return outcomes. Under the guise of safeguarding rights and ensuring informed decision-making, these processes can create a structured pathway that nudges or pressures refugees toward return, regardless of conditions on the ground. Technical assessments of voluntariness may fail to capture the coercive realities refugees face, such as the withdrawal of aid, restrictive residency policies, or the threat of arrest and deportation.

Meanwhile, risk mitigation frameworks can be leveraged not only to monitor protection concerns, but also to manage and justify returns, giving them the appearance of legitimacy even when they occur under duress. In this way, the very systems designed to uphold refugee rights can be instrumentalized to serve broader political goals of reducing refugee populations and reasserting control over mobility.

The plan anticipates up to 400,000 returns, including 5,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria, by the end of 2025. This target assumes relative stability and service restoration in Syria, as well as continued social stability and donor support in Lebanon. Yet these assumptions remain largely aspirational.

While the plan frames these targets as contingent on favorable conditions, their mere articulation exerts pressure on humanitarian actors to facilitate returns, even when conditions are imperfect. The inclusion of return cash grants, transportation assistance, legal aid, and expedited processing creates incentives that can blur the line between facilitating choice and promoting return.

UNHCR’s complex operational relationship with Lebanese government bodies further complicates the safeguarding of voluntariness. While necessary for logistical coordination, this partnership requires working in a political environment where some political actors have publicly advocated for large-scale returns regardless of conditions in Syria. The involvement of state security bodies in return counselling, border monitoring, and Go-and-See facilitation risks creating a perception—if not a reality—of coerced or pressured returns.

At the same time, funding gaps and donor fatigue threaten to erode the humanitarian community’s capacity to resist politically motivated return agendas. The return plan requires USD 150 million, yet it is nested within the broader USD 2.99 billion LRP appeal. With global attention fragmented and donor priorities shifting, there is a growing risk that financial pressures will lead to the prioritization of return programming at the expense of longer-term protection and sustainable solutions for those who remain.

Concluding Remarks

The 2025 return plan reflects unprecedented coordination, technical sophistication, and a clear commitment to upholding humanitarian principles. But voluntariness cannot simply be designed into policy frameworks or measured by bureaucratic metrics. It must be grounded in the lived realities of Syrians—realities shaped by hardship, fear, and often, a profound lack of choice.

Our ongoing qualitative research at the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University underscores the need to move beyond homogenized narratives of the Syrian refugee experience in Lebanon. The displaced population is not a monolith. Refugees’ decision-making processes are shaped by intersecting factors such as gender, class, legal status, sect, urban or rural origin, and exposure to past violence.

These variables, in turn, produce complex and often contradictory notions of safety—some prioritize physical security, others economic stability, social belonging, or protection from gender-based violence. For some, remaining in Lebanon, despite its hardships, represents a form of safety; for others, return to Syria, even amid risk, becomes the lesser evil. Humanitarian and policy frameworks that ignore this complexity risk undermining both the principle of voluntariness and the credibility of the return agenda itself.

Without constant vigilance, the very systems intended to protect refugees may become conduits for coerced return, eroding the foundations of humanitarian protection and potentially setting the stage for a new cycle of displacement, instability, and human rights violations.

As Lebanon stands at this critical juncture, the essential question remains: will the promise of voluntary return hold—or will it collapse under the weight of political expediency and the desperation of those with no other options?