DATA & METHODOLOGY
Every number on this site, with its source
One downloadable file holds every figure behind every chart we publish, with a source URL, a date and a verification status per figure. Reuse it — CC BY 4.0.
Sourcing standards
Every figure carries its own source URL and a verification status. 'verified' = the figure was read directly from the cited primary or near-primary source. 'reported' = the figure comes from a credible secondary report citing a primary source we did not open directly. 'unverified' = we could not confirm the figure against a primary source and it is published with an explicit on-page flag. Ranges are published as ranges, never collapsed to a midpoint.
What the badges mean
- Sourced Sourced. Every figure was read directly from the primary or near-primary source named beneath it.
- Reported Reported. At least one figure comes from a credible secondary report citing a primary document we did not open ourselves. Still sourced — the source line names which report — but one step further from the original.
- Estimate Estimate. A projection or an order-of-magnitude figure. Projections are drawn hatched and at 40% opacity so they can never be mistaken for a recorded value.
- Unverified figure Unverified figure. We could not confirm the figure against a primary source. We publish it with this flag, or we do not publish it.
Ranges are published as ranges
Where a source gives a range, we chart the range. We never collapse it to a midpoint and we never present a projection with the same visual weight as a recorded value.
All monetary figures are nominal US dollars at current prices unless stated. Euro figures converted at the rate cited in the source article, not at a rate we chose.
Charts in the dataset
| ID | Title | Verification | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| chart-1 | Syria's reconstruction bill dwarfs every pool of money currently on the table | Reported | World Bank, Syria Physical Damage and Reconstruction Assessment 2011–2024 Karam Shaar Advisory, 'Mapping MoUs in Syria: Shifting Investment Agendas', Syria in Figures Issue 14 The Arab Weekly / EU Brussels IX 'Standing with Syria' conference, 17 March 2025 |
| chart-2 | Rebuilding costs twice what the damage was recorded at — and housing is where the gap is widest | Sourced | World Bank, Syria Physical Damage and Reconstruction Assessment 2011–2024 |
| chart-3 | Inflation collapsed, the budget flipped to surplus, and growth turned — all within three years | Sourced | World Bank, Macro Poverty Outlook — Syrian Arab Republic, April 2026 |
| chart-4 | The single biggest economic change of 2026 was territorial, not financial | Estimate | Al Jazeera, 'It's expensive: Syria's electricity has improved, but challenges remain' World Bank, Macro Poverty Outlook, April 2026 |
The figure index
Every figure we have published in prose rather than in a chart, with its source and its verification status. This is the list to check before quoting us, and the list to search if you want to know whether we hold a number at all.
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1.6 million refugees and 1.9 million IDPs returned since December 2024
The World Bank MPO (April 2026) gives 1.5m refugees as of 19 March 2026 and 1.7m IDPs as of 5 Feb 2026 — consistent with UNHCR on a lag. Always date-stamp this figure; it moves monthly.
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15.6 million people in need of humanitarian assistance
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2025 Syria humanitarian plan only 35% funded; assistance reaching under 10% of displaced families
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2.45 million children out of school; 1.6 million more at risk of dropping out; roughly one in three schools unusable; over 7,000 schools damaged or destroyed
The 2.45m figure is dated 2025. Confirm against the latest UNICEF Syria situation report before republishing in 2026 copy.
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DP World agreement to develop and operate Tartous port, USD 800 million; operations began mid-November 2025
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USD 7 billion power deal with a Qatari–Turkish–US consortium led by UCC Holding, May 2025
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ACWA Power MoU to explore up to 2.5 GW of solar and wind capacity
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USD 28 billion in investment announced by President Ahmed al-Sharaa at the Future Investment Initiative, Riyadh, Oct 2025 — against USD 25.9 billion in disclosed MoU values identified independently across 40 agreements
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Caesar Syrian Civilian Protection Act of 2019 repealed by Section 6211 of the NDAA 2026
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Central Bank of Syria executed its first SWIFT transfer in 14 years on 20 November 2025
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Central Bank permitted local banks and payment firms to work with global payment companies (Visa, Mastercard), May 2026
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New Syrian pound rollout launched 1 January 2026
Sourced to secondary summary reporting. Confirm against a Central Bank of Syria announcement before republishing.
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Air traffic more than doubled; port traffic increased over sixfold; monthly imports through Tartous and Lattakia averaged 300,000 tonnes, exports 52,000 tonnes, including Syria's first heavy crude shipment in 14 years
World Bank explicitly notes these gains are 'albeit from very low levels'. Never quote the multiples without that caveat.
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2025 drought cut vegetation indices by 21% and drove wheat output to historic lows
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75 branches of foreign companies registered in Syria since the start of 2026
UNVERIFIED — attributed to The Syria Report via a search summary; the underlying article is behind a subscription and was not read directly. Do not publish without a subscription check.
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Nominal GDP fell from USD 67.5 billion (2011) to an estimated USD 21.4 billion (2024); real GDP declined ~53% between 2010 and 2022
No figures match that filter.
What we don't know
Publishing the gaps is part of the method. These are figures readers reasonably expect us to have and that no reliable source provides. We will not invent them.
- No reliable national average for daily electricity supply hours exists. Ministerial claims (24h in some areas, April 2026), field reporting (5–6h in Damascus, July 2026) and secondary summaries (~4h nationally) are mutually inconsistent because they measure different things in different places. Umran will not publish a single national figure until a metered source exists.
- No per-governorate dollar figures for damage or reconstruction cost are public. The World Bank names Aleppo, Rif Dimashq and Homs as worst-affected but publishes no values. Any governorate-level chart would be fabricated.
- No public data on how much of the USD 25.9bn in signed MoUs has actually been disbursed. This is the single most important missing number in Syrian reconstruction reporting and is the reason Umran's Project Tracker exists.
- Remittance inflows are effectively unmeasured post-2020. World Bank series for Syria has no recent observations. Any 'diaspora sends $X billion' claim should be treated as unsourced.
- Housing units rebuilt, schools reopened, and hospitals restored are not published as a national time series by any body we could find.
- UNICEF's 2.45 million out-of-school figure is dated 2025 and may not reflect the return of over 1.6 million refugees since.
Corrections log
No corrections have been issued yet. When one is, it appears here and on the article itself, dated.
Citing this data
The files at the site root change as the trackers are updated, so a citation pointing at them will drift away from what you quoted. Every month we freeze an immutable copy under a dated path. Cite the dated path — it will still return the same bytes in two years.
Suggested citation
Umran (2026). Reconstruction and cost-of-living datasets. Version 2026-07 [data set], 2026-07-28. https://www.umransyria.com/data/2026-07/ (CC BY 4.0).
Frozen versions
- 2026-07 chart-data.json · projects.json · cost-of-living.json
The live files — /chart-data.json, /projects.json, /cost-of-living.json — always hold the current figures. Use them to read, use a dated snapshot to cite.
Licence and reuse
CC BY 4.0 — reuse with attribution to Umran and to the original source listed per figure.