Baden-Württemberg Justice Minister Marion Jentings has called for reconstruction aid in Syria to be linked to the new Syrian government's cooperation in returning refugees.
"Any support for reconstruction must be conditional on the new authorities' commitment to creating suitable conditions for the return of refugees," the minister told the German Press Agency (dpa).
Jentings stressed the need to achieve a minimum level of stability inside Syria before repatriation operations can be carried out, noting that "the criteria for this stability should not be set too high." She added that the reasons that prompted Syrians to flee no longer exist after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in December 2024.
* Debate over the future of Syrian refugees
Since the overthrow of Assad, discussions have erupted in Germany about the fate of the approximately 975,000 Syrian refugees living in the country, most of whom came after 2015 due to the war.
More than 300,000 of them have subsidiary protection, meaning that they were granted asylum not because of individual persecution, but as a result of the civil war in their homeland.
*Transitional phase in Syria
Syria is currently going through a political transition after Assad fled to Russia last December, following a military offensive launched by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which later formed a transitional government that currently runs the country.
Gentges stressed that the new regime in Syria must facilitate the return of refugees, adding: "It cannot evade this obligation, as some other countries do." She pointed out that international law obliges countries to accept the return of their citizens, and that requiring cooperation in the return operations before providing any assistance is not unacceptable.
*Refugee figures in "Baden-Württemberg"
Baden-Württemberg currently hosts around 100,000 Syrian refugees. In 2024, the state received around 45,000 asylum seekers, including 23,000 from Ukraine, 20,500 asylum seekers from other countries, in addition to 1,300 people who were accepted on humanitarian grounds, such as translators and local workers from Afghanistan.
In 2023, the number of refugees received by the state reached about 79 thousand, while in 2022 the number reached 176 thousand, which put enormous pressure on the shelter centers.
Hassan Qaddour - Zaman Al-Wasl
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