Reports & Papers

This UNHCR and the Norwegian Refugee Council document explains why housing, land, and property rights are currently relevant to humanitarian response inside Syria.

This NRC Briefing Note aims to unpack some of these HLP challenges to sustainable returns to Syria, whilst also offering guidance on potential first steps to mitigate and address these  challenges before they create further conflict and prevent durable returns.

This report explores the key challenges that Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) face to access civil documentation and HLP rights from a durable solutions perspective, including in the context of returns to Syria.

This research aims to identify the appropriate approaches and solutions for sustainable land administration (LA) in Syria to enhance land tenure security, peacebuilding, economic and social recovery, and long-term reconstruction strategies.

The paper investigates the Syrian legal and administrative framework and explores key areas of application of fit-for-purpose principles for improving Syria’s land administration and introducing positive changes in the cadaster and in the processes guiding the regularisation of informal settlements and the provision of adequate housing.

This paper, published in 2022, looks at urban planning in Syria in all its four main stages: land allocation, urban planning and design, implementation of the infrastructure and allotment as well as consider specific urban issues which will play a critical role in Syria’s reconstruction and sustainable development.

This guidance note published by UN Habitat contextualises fit-for-purpose land administration principles to the national context, presents STDM as one of the key fit-for-purpose land administration tools that could be introduced, and describes few selected possible applications for its deployment.

This report by UN Habitat is a contribution towards an updating and some structural modifications to the Syrian land administration system to foster reconstruction and pave the ground to social and economic recovery.

This report analyses the various laws passed by the Syrian government related to real estate and housing, land and property rights since March 2011.

This report by the Syrian Network for Humanitarian Rights looks at the seizure of agricultural land from the Syrian authorities, particularly in the Hama and Idlib governorates.

This report published in 2019 by the Syrian Network for Humanitarian Rights examines HLP rights violations in the Homs governorate.

This 144-page report by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation on HLP violations in the Arab world presents five in-depth case studies from Syria as well as one treatment each of Northern Iraq and Libya.

A long report providing a long historical background of Aleppo's city centre and a proposal on how to rebuild it.

This report intends to establish a first approach for an urban recovery framework for post-conflict housing in Syria.

This report by UNESCO published in 2015 provides a historical overview of the urban heritage of Syria's main cities.

A report on the challenges related to clearing the rubble from Aleppo and protecting its inhabitants from future environmental risks. The report was published in 2015, before the conflict ended in the city.

The individual souqs, khans, hammams, and other functions are what made al-Madina a powerful, complex social setting. Redevelopment must not view the Souq as merely an economic enterprise isolated from other social activity. It must recognize the Souq’s critical role in Aleppo’s cultural and communal rehabilitation.

This report was published in 2017 on the housing, land and property rights challenges facing returnees to Aleppo.

This paper explores this dimension of the Syrian conflict through the lens of urbicide. It argues that different violent urban arrangements - both destructive and constructive - have been enforced in the Syrian context to consolidate the regime’s authoritarian power and eradicate socio-political diversity.

This report, taking Marota City as an example, elaborates on the issue of Housing, Land and Property rights (HLP) in the conflict and post conflict periods in Syria, particularly concerning reconstruction and informal settlements.