ABSTRACT
Peace governance and the rights-based politics of refugee returns are inseparable, yet in practice they unfold in isolation. Even when peace agreements include return provisions, peace transitions and dignified returns rarely align. This paper draws on the Syrian war as a foundational case to show how these processes, each central to the remaking of political order, have moved along discordant tracks. It distils three lessons from the Syrian war. First, refugee return evolved during the war into a marketplace for transactional conflict management. Second, a stark misalignment has persisted between top-down initiatives and the bottom-up practices through which grassroots communities have negotiated political voice. Third, refugees have remained excluded as peace actors despite their centrality to any post-war order. The Syrian case highlights the need for research on anticipatory peacebuilding defined here as an approach to peace governance that works on the conditions needed for future peace by integrating grassroots communities and refugees as peace actors long before hostilities end.