How far is Syria from recovered?

About 1.6M Syrians have come home from asylum countries since Dec 2024, the largest single recovery movement anywhere in the world. But 4.9M were still refugees at the end of 2025, and monthly return rates have flattened since mid-2025 as returnees hit the housing and jobs wall.

1.9M IDPs have returned to their home areas. The remaining 5.5M are the hard core: largely people whose homes are destroyed rather than merely inaccessible, so further progress is gated on housing, not security.

The "No Tents, No Camps" policy set the right target, but camp closure is running ahead of replacement housing being finished. Some of this decline reflects people leaving camps for damaged buildings, not adequate shelter.

Still over six in ten Syrians needing assistance in 2026. The 2025 humanitarian plan was only 35% funded and assistance reached under 10% of displaced families; need is falling far slower than displacement.

The worst-performing indicator on the page, and the one gating every displacement figure above it. Decree 59 ("Syria Without Camps") targets 60,000 homes with Aleppo as priority; even at full delivery that is 4% of national need. Completions to date are a fraction of that. No audited national completion registry exists.

UN-Habitat programmes run in Aleppo and Homs, but there is still no national mechanism to resolve destroyed records, Law 10 dispossessions, absentee claims, or inheritance for the dead and missing. Until it exists, reconstruction cannot be financed at scale.

Visible progress in the Damascus, Homs and Aleppo city centres. Rubble is also the cheapest element to fix and the most photographed, so it overstates how far the housing picture has moved.

The World Bank puts Syria near $21B GDP across ~25.6M people. Regional comparables sit four to six times higher. Government projections of $60–65B imply near-100% annual growth and are not arithmetically credible against any measured baseline.

Essentially unmoved. 60–65% remain in extreme poverty, average salaries sit near $60 a month, and the WFP food basket still costs roughly triple the minimum wage. Macroeconomic stabilisation has not reached households.

The genuine success story: inflation fell from 72.1% in 2024 to 11.5% in 2025 and the pound has appreciated. It is also the cheapest category of win, requiring policy decisions rather than capital, which is why it is nearly complete while everything requiring money is not.

Syria shipped its first heavy crude in 14 years in early 2026 and the government regained control of key fields in February 2026. Fields need major capital rehabilitation before output moves meaningfully.

Job creation is concentrated in construction, trade and services around Damascus. Public-sector wages remain far below subsistence. Weak underlying data; directional only.

Real, felt improvement: state supply went from one or two hours under Assad to roughly eight in many areas. But the November 2025 tariff reform raised household prices sharply, so access improved while affordability worsened.

Signed deals (Qatar/Türkiye 5,000MW gas plus 1,000MW solar; UCC/Siemens 4,000MW) would close most of this gap, but almost none of that capacity is generating yet. Private solar imports, at 2.25GW installed, represent households routing around the state grid rather than the grid recovering. A further $1bn, 760MW solar deal with Saudi Arabia's Al-Harafi Contracting Company, signed 5 August 2026 and paired with 1,077 MWh of battery storage, joins the same pipeline rather than the current figure: it is signed, not generating.

Networks are damaged and pumping depends on the same rationed electricity. The 2025 drought worsened supply in the northeast independently of reconstruction progress.

Facility reopening runs ahead of staffing. A large share of Syrian medical professionals left during the war, and return rates among skilled professionals are far below the general refugee return rate.

Over 7,000 schools were destroyed or damaged. Returning refugee children add demand faster than classrooms are restored, so enrolment gains understate pressure on the system.

The National Highway Rehabilitation Plan and Emergency Bridge Plan launched in 2026 and the Damascus–Aleppo highway is under repair. Tartus port and rail corridors remain at agreement stage.

Interim constitution ratified March 2025, and a 210-seat transitional People's Assembly now formally exists: 119 members elected 5 October 2025, 18 more through by-elections running to March 2026, and the remaining 73 presidentially appointed. Scored up from 20 to 28 for that — a real step beyond an interim charter on its own — and no further: as of July 2026 its first session had been delayed with no stated reason, no seat was filled by a direct popular vote, Suwayda's 3 seats remain vacant, and the permanent constitution, the transitional justice mechanism and national elections have not started.

Genuinely the fastest-moving track, and it has now moved twice. The July 2025 Executive Order lifted US sanctions comprehensively. Separately, on 24 August 2026, Syria's designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism — in place since December 1979 — was formally rescinded, which closes a distinct gap in banks' correspondent-risk screening rather than repeating what the Executive Order already did. Scored up from 55 to 63 on that basis and no further: EU measures remain partial, and correspondent banking, insurance and trade finance are still described as rebuilding rather than restored. A meaningful but partial further unlock, not a second move the size of the original 55-point one. This is also still the most reversible track on this page.

The $28B headline figure is commitments, and roughly 36:1 of it is unconditioned bilateral MoUs rather than signed, financed contracts. Announcements are not disbursement; this bar tracks money that has actually moved.