Squatting in Syria

Armenian refugees squatted in the 1920s and more recently informal settlements formed around cities such as Aleppo and the capital Damascus as people migrated from rural areas.

[2] In the 1950s, there were squatters on the periphery of Homs in the 1950s[3][4] and the Yarmouk Camp was set up in 1957 to house Palestinian refugees who had previously been squatting.

[7] Whilst poor, the squatters were mostly able to afford to build habitable structures and following the thinking of economist Hernando de Soto the state began to legalize the settlements, as mandated by Law 33 in 2008.

At the same time, evictions enforced by the military also occurred, with an elderly woman being killed by a soldier in 2005 and three people dying in 2009.

[9] In the meantime, internally displaced Syrians in Idlib Governorate had repurposed the stone ruins located in the Dead Cities to rebuild their livelihoods.