Dutch officials arrive in Syria to discuss refugee repatriation

Few of the 28,000 Syrian refugees in the Netherlands have returned to Syria since Assad’s ouster. [Getty]

A delegation of Dutch government officials arrived in Syria on Monday to discuss the repatriation of Syrian refugees displaced by the country’s civil war, according to Syria TV.

The delegation – which included the government’s Syria envoy Lex Gerts, migration officials, and representatives from the Dutch embassy in Lebanon – met with the head of Syria’s border authority Qutaiba Badawi in Damascus.

During the meeting, the Dutch delegation said it wanted to work with Syrian authorities to accelerate the repatriation of Syrians living in the Netherlands.

Almost 30,000 Syrian refugees currently live in the Netherlands.

Since the overthrow of the Assad regime, the government has offered financial incentives to refugees to return home.

However, few have travelled back to the country in the 10 months since Assad’s ouster.

Geert Wilders, the leader of the far-right Party for Freedom, has said that all Syrian refugees should be deported from the country in the next six months.

One million refugees have returned to Syria since December, the UN said last month.

More than 4.5 million others remain in neighbouring countries and Europe, while more than 7 million are still internally displaced.