After Assad's fall, Syrian refugees face asylum rollbacks as Europe pushes returns

Nawar anxiously drums his fingers against his Syrian passport as the car drives up the Damascus road away from the Syrian capital, past the burnt billboards bearing Assad's portrait. "It's not safe for me. If I go back to my hometown, after the massacre, I know I will be killed, I know it." His bleak words are a sharp contrast to the Arabic pop music on the radio. 

An estimated 6.7 million Syrians were forced to flee nearly 14 years of civil war before Bashar al-Assad was deposed in December 2024. Today, as numbers fall, the right of Syrians to claim or retain asylum in Europe and the US is being challenged.

Just days after, Nawar flew from Beirut's Rafic Hariri airport in November, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union, said of Germany's almost one million Syrians: "There are now no longer any grounds for asylum in Germany, and therefore we can also begin with repatriations."

Nawar was baffled: "What does that mean for me?"

Since Merz's statement, Nawar has been stuck in an asylum camp, delaying the processing of his application. "They didn't even open my file. Imagine. It's been four months," he shares with The New Arab.

Germany joined at least 16 other countries in pausing decisions, often justified as a review of conditions in Syria, but increasingly accompanied by pressure to return.

Processing delays in Germany fit with a wider international picture, where the expectation is that Syrians will stop seeking asylum and return.

In the UK, the Home Office has issued letters to Syrian refugees demanding fresh proof that return would place them at risk, giving recipients just 21 days to respond.

Omar, a Syrian refugee who is working as an advocate for asylum seekers in London, said the policy shift had been abrupt and punitive.

"Six hours after Assad was toppled, the Home Office thought Syria could be safe to return to," he told The New Arab. "After 14 or 15 years of continuous war, that's delusional."

According to Omar, updated country guidance now treats Arab Sunni people from cities such as Aleppo or Homs as broadly "safe", unless they are women or LGBT.

"They see the conflict as only about sectarian identity," he said. "But that's not true. A majority opponent is more of a threat than a minority one; it was often like that under Assad."

Since asylum interviews resumed in September, Omar said rejection rates had risen sharply, with applicants told by officials in the UK that they could relocate internally in Syria.

"People who left Aleppo at 10 are now being told to return at 22 and start again in Damascus, without a single family member left… anywhere in Syria."

Elsewhere in Europe, Austria has offered €1,000 to Syrians willing to return, although the majority have declined the offer. Turkey, which hosts around 2.3 million Syrians, restricted access to its free healthcare for Syrians from January 2026.

Meanwhile, in the US, Trump's administration has moved to prematurely end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Syrians, although civil rights groups successfully delayed the move in court in late 2025.

"Some have decided to return," Noor told The New Arab, from Berlin.

"Some I met in the camp said that it was wrong to be in Germany now that Syria is free of Assad. But others have come and replaced them. Mostly Druze, Alawite. Some Sunni."

Ongoing struggles

The motivation of the seven asylum seekers The New Arab spoke to for this article was largely fear that the new Syria would not be as safe for those with progressive values, differing politics, sexual difference, or minority identity.

All interviewees reported that they were no longer personally safe in Syria. The interviewees were quick to emphasise that there was good evidence for that: most had lost members of their families to violence in either Suweida, on the coast or in Homs since the fall of Assad. All pointed to fighting in Aleppo and the East as evidence of ongoing instability.

Under Assad, Noor was an activist and heavily involved in a leftist, anti-regime party that took part in clashes against both the dictator and Islamist rebels during the civil war. Only now she feels compelled to flee.

"I was less scared when the violence was coming from above. We knew what to do then. But now I feel it's everywhere," Noor explains. "It's voluntary; even my colleagues began to look at me differently. We can't fight that." 

Ultimately, she decided there was no hope for her, but she was keen to emphasise she didn't think it was only a minority question.

"A knife was pulled on me at a protest in my hometown. We were demonstrating against the killings of Alawites. They also put the knife to my friend. He had just got out of Sednaya Prison; he was Sunni." Noor's voice broke as she spoke on the phone.

Just before the arbitrary killings in Suweida that cost the lives of dozens of civilians, Noor flew to Germany, where she hoped to find safety and community.

But despite her clear case, she now remains in limbo in the German system: "I've been waiting nine months for a first meeting. It's a nightmare. This is because of Merz, he blames refugees for everything," she adds.

The mood in Germany and elsewhere, that Noor says is driving these delays, is a part of a global drive to undermine, disregard and dismantle the rights of refugees.

Far-right actors such as the administration of Donald Trump and the Italian government of Georgia Meloni are explicitly attempting to forge a new consensus against the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Both used diplomatic power at the UN General Assembly in 2025 to argue that the convention was anachronistic and overly generous to migrants.

At stake is the principle of non-refoulement — the prohibition on forcing people to return to countries of origin where they may not be safe.

In the UK, the ruling Labour Party is diluting the 1951 Convention with comprehensive changes to refugee rights. Prime Minister Keir Starmer argues that "we are seeing massive migration in ways we haven't seen in previous years" and suggests that "looking again" at "the refugee convention, the torture convention, and conventions of the rights of the children" is now necessary. 

Syrians appear to have been particularly singled out in the multi-country push against refugees.

The Joint Committee for the Welfare of Immigrants highlighted to The New Arab that Islamophobia is an aggravating factor.

One asylum seeker, The New Arab spoke with in Paris, Samer, put it differently: "Syrians were the photographs on all the tabloids, we were the main antagonists in this story of the refugee crisis when it was at its height."

For people like Samer, whose cousins were murdered in Jableh, and for Nawar and Noor, who remain under threat, as Omar points out, the situation in Syria is so unpredictable that no one can be considered safe just because of their identity.

But as centrist and far-right parties compete over migration, and asylum systems are increasingly used as instruments of deterrence, there will be pressure to ignore the truth in Syria.

For Syrians, the fall of Assad has not ended the danger; it has only made it easier for the world to look away. As Omar shares, "If they get away with treating Syrians this way, they will do it with the next group, Iranians, or others."

Jake Pace Lawrie is a journalist based in Beirut and Damascus.

Follow him on Instagram: @jakepacelawrie