Green Tabu

Some stories don’t fit into a news cycle. Housing, land and property rights in Syria are exactly that kind of tale, sprawling across legal texts, official sources, field reporting and institutional publications, and rarely brought together in one place, with the depth they deserve. That’s why we’re launching Green Tabu, Syria’s first HLP journal. Named […]

This paper concludes that reconstruction in Syria cannot be managed as an urban planning or investment matter separate from housing, property and return rights. With millions of Syrians still displaced or living abroad as refugees, a large portion of the housing stock damaged, and the cost of reconstructing residential buildings reaching levels beyond the state’s current capacity, any reconstruction process undertaken before rights are established and property disputes addressed risks producing a new wave of exclusion. The problem, therefore, lies in the possibility that urban planning and external financing may become mechanisms for redistributing property, reducing the rights of original residents, or making those affected bear the cost of reconstruction through shares and deductions. 

The Ministry of Endowments under Syria’s transitional government has begun reorganising the management of waqf (“endowment”) properties after many years in which these assets were subject to centralised administration and long-term investment and rental contracts. A waqf is, essentially, money or property dedicated to a religious, charitable, or social purpose. Its proceeds are removed from ordinary individual circulation and remain tied to the purpose specified by the founder of the waqf. According to the ministry, today’s reorganisation involves documenting endowment properties, recovering properties it considers lost or unlawfully occupied, and reassessing the rents charged on endowment real estate. The ministry presents these measures as part of an effort to regulate the endowments sector and collect the proceeds generated by its assets. However, a request by one ministry official for Ottoman archives from Turkey has raised legal and social concerns, particularly about the possible use of these records to trace certain properties and reconsider usufruct and rental agreements that have existed for many years.

More than 6 years after most Yazidis were displaced from the villages around Ras Al-Ayn, their homes and land remain registered in their names, yet they live far away and are unable to return to or make use of them. For many displaced people, return is no longer connected only to recovering a home or agricultural land, but also to regaining a sense of safety in a place associated in their memories with violence, fear and uprooting. Between property rights that remain legally recorded and realities on the ground imposed by armed factions, the return of Yazidis to their villages remains a fragile and deferred possibility. 

This paper approaches major real estate development projects as a test of how reconstruction is managed in Syria, rather than merely as investment or urban development projects. When land and property become a means of attracting finance and reactivating assets, protecting housing, land, and property rights becomes a necessary condition for preventing investment from turning into a tool for redistributing space and value outside a clear rights-based process.

Legislative Decree No. 66 of 2012 was issued as a tool for rezoning large areas of unlicensed and informal housing in Damascus. Over more than a decade, however, it has become one of Syria’s most sensitive property and housing issues. The problem is no longer confined to an urban plan or an administrative delay, but lies in a lengthy process that changed the very form of the right itself: from direct ownership of a property to zoning shares, from an existing home to a promise of alternative housing, and from property available for everyday use to a right requiring proof, valuation, allocation, financing and years of waiting. Decree No. 66 has thus become a test of how rights are produced within a reconstruction project before it is a test of the ability to construct buildings, roads and infrastructure. 

The property rights crisis in Suweida now unfolds through several channels, beginning with death registration and extending to Estate Inheritance Inventory Documents (EIIDs), powers of attorney, sales and ownership transfers. Since the July 2025 massacre, victims’ families have faced obstacles in registering deaths and amending family civil registration records, preventing heirs from obtaining the documents needed to deal with inherited property. Then, on 20 May 2026, the Ministry of Justice issued Decision No. 1475, freezing most judicial, property and notarisation transactions in the governorate. The ministry presented the decision as a measure to protect property rights, but its broad application closed the legal channels residents, expatriates and heirs need to manage their property. With no clear time limit for the freeze and no exceptions for urgent cases, ownership remains recorded in the Land Registry while the ability to sell property, transfer ownership or derive income from it is effectively suspended.

Some stories don’t fit into a news cycle. Housing, land and property rights in Syria are exactly that kind of tale, sprawling across legal texts, official sources, field reporting and institutional publications, and rarely brought together in one place, with the depth they deserve. That’s why we’re launching Green Tabu, Syria’s first HLP journal. Read its first issue here.