UN Tells Security Council Syria Has Made Zero Progress on Sweida Reintegration Nine Months After Deadly Sectarian Violence
The United Nations warned the Security Council on Monday, June 22, that Syria’s transitional government has made no progress in implementing a nine-month-old roadmap designed to stabilise the southern province of Sweida following sectarian violence in July 2025 that killed more than 1,700 people. UN Deputy Special Envoy for Syria Claudio Cordone delivered the assessment directly to the council, describing an environment of kidnappings, inter-factional rivalry, and secessionist sentiment that has rendered the internationally backed reconciliation plan inoperable. The warning came as the broader Syrian political transition also stalled, with the country’s transitional parliament still unformed more than eight months after elections were held.
“There has been no progress on the implementation of the September 2025 roadmap of confidence-building and reintegration in Sweida,” Cordone told the Security Council.
What Happened in Sweida and What the Roadmap Was Meant to Do
A UN investigation published in March 2026 found that more than 1,700 people — most of them civilian members of the Druze religious sect and some members of the Bedouin community — were killed in Sweida province in July 2025. The investigation found that Syrian government forces, tribal fighters, and Druze armed groups may have committed war crimes during the violence. The killings were the most deadly episode of sectarian violence in Syria since the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
A government-led, internationally backed roadmap launched in September 2025 was intended to restore order and repair relations among Druze factions, Bedouin communities, and the central Damascus government. The plan had support from Jordan and the United States, and was framed as a confidence-building exercise to prevent a recurrence of violence and bring Sweida back under functioning state administration.
Nine months later, Cordone told the Security Council, not a single element of that plan has been implemented.
The Competing Accusations
Damascus and Sweida’s Druze leadership have traded blame for the deadlock, and neither side has moved toward the compromises the roadmap requires.
Sweida Governor Mustafa al-Bakour, an appointee of the Damascus government, told Qatari-owned Syria TV in April that Druze armed groups had obstructed efforts to restore state institutions, improve services, and rebuild trust. Bakour said the government continued to fund public salaries, support healthcare and education, and restore infrastructure in Sweida despite the security challenges. He rejected Druze factions’ accusations that the central government had restricted food and other supplies to the province.
Druze leaders — who do not speak with a unified voice — have pushed back, saying they are safeguarding their community after last year’s violence and accusing Damascus of eroding trust during the clashes. Cordone said kidnappings, counter-kidnappings, and rivalries among Druze factions continued to undermine security in the province, complicating the Syrian government’s ability to implement the roadmap even where political will existed.
13,500 Students Blocked From Sitting Exams
The human cost of the political deadlock became concrete in June when UN-supported mediation failed to resolve disagreements over the location and security arrangements for national examinations. As a result, 13,500 students in Sweida were unable to sit their national examinations this month.
Most students in the province have now missed national exams for two consecutive years, according to the UN — an educational disruption with long-term consequences for an already traumatised population.
The Secession Threat
Cordone flagged a development that strikes at the most fundamental question of Syria’s post-Assad territorial order. Calls from some Druze leaders for Sweida province to secede from Syria have intensified in the absence of progress on the roadmap, the envoy said, adding that such calls “threatened Syria’s unity and territorial integrity.”
While the Druze constitute the vast majority of Sweida’s population, they are a minority in Syria as a whole, making secessionist sentiment a politically explosive dynamic for Damascus, which has staked its legitimacy on maintaining Syria’s territorial boundaries as defined under Assad.
Syria’s UN envoy, Ibrahim Olabi, used the same Security Council session to describe Israel as the main obstacle to stability in Syria, citing Israeli military operations that have continued in southern Syria in buffer zones Israel seized during the final stages of the Assad conflict and after. Olabi welcomed the US-Iran memorandum of understanding, describing regional de-escalation as essential to Syria’s transition.
The Broader Transition in Trouble
Cordone’s Sweida assessment was delivered alongside a broader warning about Syria’s political transition. Syria’s transitional parliament has still not been formed more than eight months after elections were held, with President Ahmed al-Sharaa yet to make the appointments — including one-third of parliament’s membership — that he is constitutionally designated to fill.
“The delay is troubling,” Cordone said.
The acting assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Indrika Ratwatte, briefing the Security Council on behalf of UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher, said a better future for Syria remained within reach, noting that approximately 1.6 million refugees and nearly 2 million internally displaced people had returned home since December 2024. He said the $2.92 billion humanitarian appeal for Syria was only 20% funded at the midyear point, calling for more predictable international financing. Recent flooding along the Euphrates had affected more than 17,600 people, Ratwatte said. In Quneitra, nearly 80% of the population still requires humanitarian assistance.
Background
Sweida has been a political and security flashpoint since the overthrow of Assad in December 2024. The province’s Druze majority had maintained a complex posture of partial autonomy throughout the Syrian civil war, neither fully aligning with the Assad government nor joining the armed opposition. When Assad fell, Sweida found itself caught between Damascus’s new transitional authorities — led by the Syrian rebel coalition that had toppled him — and local armed groups that had built parallel structures over more than a decade of war. The July 2025 violence erupted from a dispute between Druze and Bedouin communities that quickly drew in government-aligned tribal fighters, producing the death toll documented in the March UN report. The September 2025 roadmap was brokered with Jordanian and US involvement and was widely seen as the transitional government’s most important near-term test of whether it could manage ethnic and sectarian complexity beyond its core power base in the northwest.
What Happens Next
The UN Security Council session on Monday produced no formal resolution or new mandate. Cordone said the underlying issues driving the deadlock in Sweida — the unresolved security arrangements, the competing factional authorities, and the mutual distrust between Damascus and local Druze leadership — remain as unresolved as they were when the roadmap was launched. Whether the 13,500 students who missed June examinations will have any opportunity to sit them before the academic year formally closes has not been confirmed. Syria’s UN envoy said the formation of the transitional parliament remains pending, with no announced timeline for President al-Sharaa to make the appointments needed to seat the body. For the roadmap to move forward, analysts say Damascus and Sweida’s fractured Druze leadership will need to reach separate security understandings before any formal implementation process can begin — a prerequisite that neither side has publicly committed to pursuing.
