In Yarmouk, Residents are Renovating on an Individual Basis Without State Planning or Support

In the Yarmouk Palestinian camp, south of Damascus, life is slowly returning as more families come back and attempt to repair their damaged homes. However, this is happening without any real support from official government bodies or international organisations. Residents are paying for home renovations themselves, with only limited initiatives from the local community, in the absence of any urban planning or clear housing policy. While rubble is being cleared and some doors and windows replaced, the daily hardship remains far beyond the capacity of individuals.

The Yarmouk Camp was established in 1957 to house Palestinian refugees following the 1948 Nakba. It is located eight kilometres south of central Damascus. Before 2011, its population ranged between 500,000 and 600,000, including around 160,000 Palestinian refugees; the rest were Syrians and other residents. During the war, the camp became a battleground, suffering a long siege by regime forces, and was overrun by the Islamic State in 2015. The regime regained control in 2018, by which time the destruction was widespread, with only a few hundred families remaining.

During the period of Assad regime control, Yarmouk Camp underwent a series of contradictory administrative and planning measures. These began with the dissolution of the independent local committee that had managed the camp since 1962, replaced by a service department reporting directly to Damascus Governorate. In 2020, the governorate proposed a new zoning plan based on Urban Planning Law No. 5 of 1982. This plan triggered a wave of objections due to its threat to the rights of Palestinians who did not formally own their homes. The plan was suspended but not cancelled. Later, the governorate selectively and opaquely applied Law No. 3 of 2018, concerning rubble removal, without issuing formal decisions designating real estate zones, instead using ambiguous notices that threatened residents with fines.(Within the Syrian system, there’s an administrative classification used by the cadastre and financial departments called “real estate zones” (manatiq iqariyya). This refers to cadastral units smaller than administrative districts; a single administrative district may include multiple real estate zones. The term applies to all land — whether inside or outside zoning plans, formal or informal settlements — and is not necessarily linked to the regulatory status of buildings or land use).  At the same time, strict conditions were imposed on return and renovation, including security approval and a paid technical inspection, limiting the actual return to a small number of families, most of whom were affiliated with pro-regime militias. In this environment, looting crews operated openly with security backing, and forged documents were used to seize property, amid a total lack of institutional protection for the rights of absent owners. These bureaucratic and legal obstacles have a disproportionate impact on women, many of whom do not hold formal ownership documents or have access to legal support networks. In the absence of official monitoring, this exposes them to a heightened risk of exclusion or property rights violations during return and renovation processes.

According to a correspondent for The Syria Report, around 3,000 families (approximately 15,000 people) have returned to Yarmouk since the beginning of 2025. Many of them were previously displaced to northern Syria or were living elsewhere inside or outside the country. This gradual return has not been accompanied by any urban planning initiative from Damascus Governorate, despite repeated meetings between community delegations and local officials. The correspondent noted that no official vision for reorganising the area was presented in those meetings; residents were left to handle repairs on their own. There has been limited participation by NGOs in supporting reconstruction in the camp, mainly through modest aid.

UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, requires the family to already be living in their damaged home in order to receive partial financial assistance for repairs — a condition that is often unfeasible. UNRWA is responsible for providing essential services to Palestinian refugees in Yarmouk, including education, healthcare, and humanitarian aid.

Jihad, a camp resident in his forties, said he recently returned to his home after years of displacement and found that it would cost around USD 10,000 to repair the war damage (one dollar is equivalent to SYP 10,000). Although he had previously tried to enter the camp under the Assad regime, security approvals had always been an obstacle, and he was never allowed to stay more than a few hours. Today, following his return, he faces the burden of renovation alone. UNRWA is offering only limited financial support — no more than a quarter of the amount needed, covering only minor repairs.

Abu Mahmoud’s situation is similar to Jihad’s. His nearly destroyed home needs an estimated USD 20,000 for renovation — equivalent to SYP 200 million — a sum far beyond his means. He says he applied to UNRWA but was only offered USD 4,000, just a fifth of the required amount. With no substantial support available, Abu Mahmoud has been trying to seek help from other organisations, so far without success.

Sources in Damascus Governorate confirmed to The Syria Report that there is currently no discussion of a new zoning plan for Yarmouk Camp. Meanwhile, local sources within the camp said that engineering teams have recently been formed, with help from the municipality and local community, to draft what they called “zoning plans” for some of the most severely affected residential blocks. These efforts are separate from the previous official zoning plan. The teams are providing their services free of charge, aiming to assess the structural condition of homes in the worst-hit areas to identify buildings at risk of collapse. Based on agreements between these engineering teams and homeowners in those areas, certain residential blocks may be earmarked for reorganisation.

For now, the Damascus Governorate is focusing on partial services like electricity, water, school repairs, and healthcare improvements, to help ease the return of residents. Sources noted that renovation activity in the camp has increased significantly in the past two months, in parallel with the rising number of returning families.

Separately, in mid-June, the Syrian Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management, through the Civil Defence, also known as “White Helmets”, launched a new operation to remove rubble from the camp. So far, there is no clear information on whether Civil Defence has documented the ownership of the rubble or obtained consent from the owners before clearing it. There is also no information on where the rubble is being transported, or whether it will be recycled later.

In the absence of a clear planning vision and with no reconstruction strategy, the revival of life in Yarmouk appears to depend solely on the ability of individuals to bear the costs of rebuilding and rehabilitation. Thus, renovation in Yarmouk has become an isolated individual effort, driven by personal resources and, in some cases, limited support from NGOs.