Syrian refugees in Iraq begin the journey home
Syrian refugees in Iraq begin the journey home
Khalid and Wedad receive counselling from UNHCR at their initial return interview.
Khalid and Wedad started their marriage with a border between them. When their families agreed the match, Khalid was already in Iraq. He had fled Lattakia, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, in 2021. “It was not safe in Syria because of the war,” he says.
Six months later, in 2022, Wedad followed. She arrived in Baghdad to begin her married life, leaving behind her parents, her sisters and career. A university graduate in engineering, she had been working as a primary school teacher in Syria.
The couple married in Iraq and settled in Baghdad. They registered with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, asylum-seekers, and Khalid found work as a blacksmith, taking daily jobs on building sites. The work was informal and physically hard, but there was plenty of it. “In the beginning the situation was good, there was work and opportunity for us Syrians,” he says.
Their daughter, Asma, was born a year or so later. Wedad stayed at home to raise her. “I haven’t worked here in Iraq. It was hard to find a job, and also, I had given birth and had to raise my daughter,” she says. Her parents and sisters had stayed in Lattakia throughout the war. She kept in touch with them by phone.
Basil Al-Saudi, supports Khalid and Wedad through the departure procedures at Al-Amariyya Residency Directorate.
UNHCR processing the application of Khalid and Wedad.
Wedad’s biometrics are taken at Residency.
Khalid and Wedad and Al-Amariyya Residency Directorate.
Over four years the family built a modest life. A small, rented flat, whatever work Khalid could find and a daughter who had never known any home but Baghdad.
Then the work dried up. “Over the last year, and the last six months in particular, the opportunities have disappeared,” says Khalid. Paying the rent became a monthly struggle. Then years of manual labour took their toll and he injured his back.
Earlier this year, the couple began to talk about going home. Money was one reason, but family was the bigger one: neither had seen their parents in years. “The situation in Lattakia is now better. It is not perfect, but there are opportunities,” says Wedad, who still speaks to her family often.
They know their decision is not a common one. “We do not know a lot of people considering going back,” Khaled says. The numbers back him up. A UNHCR survey of return intentions found that only 2 per cent of Syrian refugees in Iraq plan to go home in the next 12 months. “But for us it feels like the right decision,” Khaled adds.
They also had a deadline. “It has been difficult to pay the rent in recent months because of the difficulty finding work,” Khalid says. “It is due for renewal at the end of the month. We hope to depart before then.”
For Syrian refugees in Iraq who decide to go return, the journey starts long before the border crossing. Joint return procedures run by UNHCR and the Government of Iraq, through the Permanent Committee of the Ministry of Interior (PC-MOI), aim to facilitate the different administrative steps of returning.
After Khaled and Wedad first registered their wish to return through an online form, they were called for a return counselling appointment at UNHCR’s registration centre in Baghdad. There, a staff member walked them through each step, explained what they could expect back in Syria and assessed that both Khaled and Wedad, individually and voluntarily, decided to return.
Khalid and Wedad both held valid Syrian passports, which spared them a step that some Syrian refugees in Iraq have to take. Their daughter was another matter. Asma had an Iraqi birth certificate but no Syrian documents, so the family had to apply to the Syrian embassy in Baghdad for a travel document for her.
At the embassy, a new problem came up. On Asma’s birth certificate, Wedad’s second and third names had been written the wrong way round, so they did not match her passport. The couple had to go back to the Directorate of Health and request a corrected birth certificate, which added another week to their departure process.
Keen to leave before their apartment lease expired, two weeks after their counselling session, with Asma’s travel document finally in hand, the family arrived at the Residency Directorate in Al-Amariyya, Baghdad, where exit formalities for Syrian refugees are processed.
They handed over their documents and waited their turn. Officials took their biometrics: iris scans and fingerprints. Khalid and Wedad were registered as asylum-seekers and had never obtained a PC-MOI card, so they also had to pay an exit fee of IQD 100,000 per person. By the end of the morning, exit approvals had been secured.
A UNHCR staff member is based at the Residency Directorate on Sundays and Mondays, the days when the voluntary return of Syrians going through the joint procedures are processed. Once the permit was issued, the staff member updated the family’s record in UNHCR’s systems. This opened their file for return cash assistance, which helps cover some of the costs of the journey.
Three days later, on the Wednesday, Khalid collected the assistance from a Zain Cash agent in central Baghdad: 390,000 IQD, the equivalent of USD 100 for each family member. It would cover costs the family had already paid while preparing to leave, as well as their bus tickets for that evening.
Khalid, Wedad and Asma pictured at home in the apartment they rented in Baghdad.
Khaled is pictured with all their possessions packed up.
That night they boarded a bus in central Baghdad for the seven-hour drive to the Al-Qaim border crossing, and on into Syria. About 24 hours later, they were in Lattakia. Wedad marked their arrival with a video on her Facebook page. It shows her and her mother seeing each other for the first time since she left for Iraq. Emotions are high.
Khalid, Wedad and Asma are among over 1,000 Syrian refugees whose return has been facilitated by UNHCR and the Government so far in 2026. Around 305,000 Syrian refugees and asylum-seekers remain registered with UNHCR in Iraq. For every family who decides to go back, UNHCR works with the Government of Iraq to make sure the decision is free and informed, that they leave with their documents in order and that the departure will not result in protection risks for those departing or remaining.
For the family, the journey is only the start. Khalid plans to have a small operation on his back, and then to begin repairing their house, which was damaged in the February 2023 earthquake. Wedad is choosing between going back to teaching and starting a small cooking business.
“Now she is getting older, it will be nice to have something of my own back in Syria,” she says of Asma.