At a UN briefing, UN officials presented a UNDP-led socioeconomic assessment describing the scale of destruction in Syria and offering recovery scenarios that would require substantial investment and governance reforms.

Abdul Dardari, speaking for the UN country team, summarized the assessment’s core findings and repeatedly stressed the scale of human and economic loss. "The lives lost in the Syria conflict so far, what has been reported is 618,000," Dardari said, adding that 113,000 people were forcibly disappeared and that "more than half of the population" had been displaced, with about 7,200,000 internally displaced people and about 6,000,000 refugees.

The report lists steep economic and social declines: GDP has fallen by more than half since 2010; 90% of the population now live in poverty and 66% in extreme poverty; unemployment rose from about 8% before the conflict to about 24%, with an estimated 5,400,000 people losing their jobs; and roughly 16,500,000 Syrians now depend on assistance. Food-security figures cited in the briefing included 4% in acute food insecurity, 52% in severe food insecurity and 13% at risk.

Dardari said Syria’s energy and housing infrastructure suffered severe damage: generation capacity reportedly fell from roughly 9,000 megawatts in 2010 to under 1,500 megawatts today, about 70% of power plants have been damaged and an estimated 75% of national grid capacity has been lost. He also said that, of about 5.5 million homes in 2010, several hundred thousand were fully destroyed and that about one in three houses was destroyed or damaged, producing an estimated 5,700,000 people in need of shelter assistance.

"In simple terms, the country lost 40 years of human development," Dardari said, citing a decline in Syria’s Human Development Index to about 0.557, below the 1990 recorded index and down from roughly 0.661 in 2010.

On recovery pathways, Dardari presented model-based scenarios and trade-offs. He said that, if Syria continued to grow at the recent five-year average of about 1.3% annually, it would take more than five decades to return to 2010 GDP levels. Faster recovery scenarios presented included a 10-year return to 2010 GDP with sustained annual growth of about 7.6% and more ambitious catch-up trajectories that would require double-digit annual growth and "massive investments," excluding housing. Dardari gave a headline figure of $36,000,000,000 in economic-sector investments over 10 years — "excluding housing" — as an approximate financing need to reach one of the outlined recovery scenarios.

Dardari emphasized that investments alone would be insufficient without major governance reforms. He said the models assume "dramatic governance reforms" including improvements in public administration, transparency, accountability and institutional capacity and that such reforms would be necessary to boost total factor productivity and attract private investment.

The briefing also addressed financial constraints and sanctions. Dardari said foreign-exchange reserves had fallen from about $23.5 billion in 2010 to "less than a billion dollars" today and that the accumulated GDP loss since 2011 was about $700 billion. He and other UN speakers warned that sanctions and related "chilling effects" or overcompliance by banks and companies could constrain investment and trade unless addressed in recovery planning.

Sudipto Mukherjee, the UNDP resident representative in Damascus, described the caretaker authorities as "extremely keen to make sure that there is a level of stability that can be achieved very, very quickly" and said authorities were "looking for quick wins." Mukherjee said UNDP and UN partners would share the report and continue technical engagement and that many of the report’s findings had already been discussed in bilateral and group meetings with officials in Damascus.

On methodology, Mukherjee said the assessment relied on secondary data, triangulating existing sector assessments, focus-group discussions and key-informant interviews and building on previous UN multisector assessments conducted during the COVID period and after the 2023 earthquake.

Report presenters and questioners repeatedly stressed sequencing: near-term work on restoring basic public services (electricity, water, sanitation, health and education) and stabilizing livelihoods, alongside parallel institutional and governance reforms and a financing framework that would align domestic revenues, grants, loans, remittances and private investment to the recovery scenarios. Renewable and off-grid energy options were included in the technical energy assessment and will be part of the authorities’ investment choices, according to the presentation.

The UN team said the full report and presentation would be shared after the embargo was lifted and that technical engagement with Damascus and local communities would continue as the UN seeks to develop an integrated financing framework and investment priorities.

The briefing recorded multiple questions from international reporters about donor prospects, asset recovery, sanctions, regional connectivity and timelines for institutional reforms. Speakers repeatedly cautioned that timelines and outcomes depend on political, security and financial conditions and noted that some recovery measures are contingent on the authorities’ choices and external actors’ responses.