Hundreds of Syrians drop asylum bids in Cyprus since Assad's fall, Minister says

Hundreds of Syrians who sought refuge in Cyprus after the onset of civil war over a decade ago have withdrawn asylum applications in the weeks since the fall of Bashar Al-Assad, Cypriot officials said on Wednesday, Reuters reports.

“We have on average 40 asylum requests made by Syrians being withdrawn a day from 9 December onwards,” said Nikolas Ioannides, Cyprus’s Migration Minister.

He said that from 9 December, 2024 to 31 January,  2025, 1,367 Syrians had expressed an intention to return to Syria, with 944 of those individuals rescinding their asylum applications. Another 423 had waived a refugee or subsidiary protection status, with 755 having left Cyprus, Ioannides said.

Cyprus is the European Union’s easternmost state and the closest to the Middle East, situated in the eastern Mediterranean about 160 km (100 miles) west of the shores of Lebanon and Syria.

Thousands of Syrians had fled to the island in recent years, mainly by sea, forcing authorities to suspend the processing of asylum applications following a sharp increase early last year.

Over the past two years, however, the numbers of asylum seekers have decreased, in part due to the plugging of a loophole via a breakaway Turkish-backed state in northern Cyprus that was previously used by migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.

Official data showed a 69 per cent drop in asylum applications from 2022 to 2024, officials said.

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