Syria, the forgotten crisis?

Mid-August, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) announced that it faced a record funding gap for its emergency response budget in 2022. Last December, OCHA appealed for $41 billion (CHF40 billion) – also a record – to alleviate multiple humanitarian crises this year, from Syria, to Afghanistan, Yemen, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But that was before Russia invaded Ukraine and before the rise in food and fuel prices. Now, more than half way through the year, the UN has received just $15.2 billion. It has had to cut rations to people in drought affected countries in the Horn of Africa. In Somalia, now facing its fifth successive failed rainy season, over a million people have fled their homes in search of food. Aid agencies warn that for Somalia, time is running out to avert famine.

And what of Syria? That conflict has been going on for more than 11 years, and while we may not hear so much about it these days, it’s not over yet. Fighting and air strikes continue in the northwest of the country, more than half of all Syrians are displaced from their homes, and, with towns, hospitals and schools destroyed in more than a decade of war, the UN estimates that the number of Syrians in need of humanitarian assistance is higher now than at any point in the conflict.

That’s what we’re discussing in our latest Inside Geneva podcast, in which we’re joined by Sanjana Quazi, OCHA’s director for Turkey, and Tanya Evans, regional director for Syria with the International Rescue Committee. To start, they added some detail to the UN statement of record levels of need: 90% of Syria’s population lives below the poverty line, 14.6 million Syrians need help.

Negative coping mechanisms

Many, says Tanya Evans, have turned to what aid agencies call “negative coping mechanisms”. What does that mean exactly? “Early marriage, child labour, and what’s really alarming is increased attempted suicide.”

Imagine being a parent in Syria, with so little means available that your only option to ensure your family is fed is to send your child out to work, or to marry her off? That is the reality facing millions of Syrian families .

“The World Food Programme had to reduce by 13% their food rations because of {lack of} funding,” Sanjana Quazi tells Inside Geneva.

What’s more, the value of what money aid agencies do have is being eroded by rising food and fuel prices, and rocketing inflation in Syria, northern areas of which recently switched to the Turkish lira as currency. “In northwest Syria a year ago a hundred lira would enable me to feed my entire family. Now a hundred Turkish lira is only enabling me to buy one loaf of bread,” explains Evans.

Aid politics

You might think such stark statistics would spur donor countries on to do more to help. In fact, humanitarian aid to Syria has become mired in politics. To deliver the supplies in the quantity Syria needs, in 2014 the UN negotiated cross border deliveries, sending tonnes of food and medicine in via Turkey and Jordan.

But those crossings have to be approved by the UN Security Council. Russia, which intervened in Syria in support of President Assad, argues that supplies can all be delivered via Damascus, and it has been vetoing renewal of the crossing permits. There were once four crossings, they have been whittled down to just one, from Turkey, and it has now been granted permission to stay open for just another six months, rather than the usual 12.

While it’s true that aid agencies like the World Food Programme have been able to deliver some supplies via Damascus, enough to feed around 50,000 people, those supplies are dwarfed by what is being delivered through the one remaining border from Turkey. “We support 2.4 million people through that one border” explains Quazi. She says that 50,000 trucks have gone through there since 2014.

Now, with the authorisation to keep that border open renewed for just six months, aid agencies are worried that the lifeline of aid will be cut off in mid-winter, just when needs are greatest. To try to prepare, they are planning ahead and prepositioning supplies. But that again is difficult when funding is so tight.

Hope for reconstruction

Meanwhile Syrians themselves are, of course, impatient for the day when they are not dependent on aid; when their homes, schools and hospitals are rebuilt, when there are jobs to go to, and food is affordable. But, aid agencies acknowledge, the step from emergency aid to economic recovery and development is always tricky, and for now, with so many people in need, the focus will remain on immediate humanitarian support.

That kind of support is really only supposed to be temporary – humanitarian crises are not supposed to last decades. But, because of a failure of political will, they do. Just last month here in Geneva, the UN special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen was forced to cancel planned negotiations on a new constitution.

Those negotiations had, at best, only been limping along, but now they are on hold indefinitely. Again, pressure from President Assad’s backers in the Kremlin seems to be at least part of the problem.

So where does that leave the aid agencies? Evans and Quazi don’t want us to forget about Syria, because a forgotten humanitarian crisis is a crisis that may never end. That lost political will, to draft a constitution Syrians can unite around, to rebuild shattered infrastructure, needs to be found again.

In the meantime, humanitarians will continue doing what they can. Why should they give up, asks Quazi, when ordinary Syrian families show such resilience? “There is hope,” she says. “And as long as there’s hope, that will always keep me going.”