The community gets together to repair a school in the city of Saraqib, located south of Idlib, that was destroyed by bombing during the Assad regime. Credit: Sonia Al Ali/IPS

By Sonia Al Ali
IDLIB, Syria, Oct 16 2025 (IPS)

The war has deprived thousands of Syrian children of their right to education, especially displaced children in makeshift camps. Amidst difficult economic conditions and the inability of many families to afford educational costs, the future of these children is under threat.

Adel Al-Abbas, a 13-year-old boy from Aleppo, northern Syria, was forced to quit his education after being displaced from his city and moving to a camp on the Syrian-Turkish border. He says, “I was chasing my dream like any other child, but my family’s poverty and the harsh circumstances stood in my way and destroyed all my dreams.”

Adel had hoped to become an engineer, but he left school and gave up on his goal. He replaced books and pens with work tools to help his impoverished family secure life’s necessities. He adds, “We are living in extremely difficult conditions today; we can’t even afford food. So, I have to find a job to survive and help my family, especially after my father was hit by shrapnel in the head, which caused him a permanent disability.”

Adel’s mother is saddened by her son’s situation, saying to IPS, “We need the income my son brings in after my husband got sick and became unable to provide for our family. In any case, work is better than an education that is now useless after he’s been out of school for so long and has fallen behind his peers.”

Reem Al-Diri, an 11-year-old, left school after her family was displaced from rural Damascus to the city of Idlib in northern Syria. Explaining why, she speaks with a clear sense of regret: “I loved school very much and was one of the top students in my class, but my family decided I had to stop my education to help my mom with the housework.”

The young girl confirms that she watches children on their way to school every morning, and she wishes she could go with them to complete her education and become a teacher in the future.

Reem’s mother, Umayya Al-Khalid, justifies her daughter’s absence from school, saying, “After we moved to a camp on the outskirts of Idlib, the schools became far from where we live. We also suffer from a lack of security and the widespread kidnapping of girls. So, I feared for my daughter and preferred for her to stay at home.”

Causes of school dropout

Akram Al-Hussein, a school principal in Idlib, northern Syria, speaks about the school dropout crisis in the country.

“School dropouts are one of the most serious challenges facing society. The absence of education leads to an unknown future for children and for the entire community.”

Al-Hussein emphasizes that relevant authorities and the international community must exert greater efforts to support education and ensure it does not remain a distant dream for children who face poverty and displacement.

He adds, “The reasons and motivations for children dropping out of school vary, ranging from conditions imposed by war—such as killings, displacement, and forced conscription-to child labor and poverty. Other factors include frequent displacement and the child’s inability to settle in one place during the school year, as well as a general lack of parental interest in education and their ignorance of the risks of depriving a child of schooling.”

In this context, the Syria Response Coordinators team, a specialized statistics group in Syria, noted in a statement that the number of out-of-school children in Syria has reached more than 2.5 million, with northwestern Syria alone accounting for over 318,000 out-of-school children, with more than 78,000 of them living in displacement camps. Of this group, 85 percent are engaged in various occupations, including dangerous ones.

In a report dated June 12, 2024, the team identified the key reasons behind the widening school dropout crisis.

A shortage of schools relative to the population density, a shift towards private education, difficult economic conditions, a lack of local government laws to prevent children from entering the labor market, displacement and forced migration, and a marginalized education sector with insufficient support from both local and international humanitarian organizations are seen as the causes.

The team’s report warned that if this trend continues, it will lead to the emergence of an uneducated, illiterate generation. This generation will be consumers rather than producers, and as a result, these uneducated children will become a burden on society.

Initiatives to Restore Destroyed Schools

The destruction of schools in Syria has significantly contributed to the school dropout crisis. Throughout the years of war, schools were not spared from destruction, looting, and vandalism, leaving millions of children without a place to learn or in buildings unfit for education. However, with the downfall of the Assad regime, several initiatives have been launched to restore these schools. This is seen as an urgent and immediate necessity for building a new Syria.

Samah Al-Dioub, a school principal in the northern Syrian city of Maarat al-Nu’man, says, “Syria’s schools suffered extensive damage from both the earthquake and the bombings. We have collected funds from the city’s residents and are now working on rehabilitating the school, but the need is still immense and the costs are very high, especially with residents returning to the city.” She explained that their current focus is on surveying schools and prioritizing which ones need renovation the most.

Engineer Mohammad Hannoun, director of school buildings at the Syrian Ministry of Education, states that approximately 7,400 schools across Syria were either partially or completely destroyed. They have restored 156 schools so far.

Hannoun adds, “We are working to rehabilitate schools in all Syrian regions, aiming to equip at least one school in every village or city to welcome returning students. The Ministry of Education, along with local and international organizations and civil society, are all contributing to these restoration efforts.”

Hannoun points out that the extensive damage to school buildings harms both teachers and students. It leads to a lack of basic educational resources, puts pressure on the few schools that are still functional, and causes a large number of students to drop out, which ultimately impacts the quality of the educational process.

As part of their contingency plans, Hannoun explains that the ministry, in collaboration with partner organizations, intends to activate schools with the available resources to accommodate children returning from camps and from asylum countries. This effort is particularly focused on affected areas that have experienced massive waves of displacement.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in 2025, 16.7 million people, including 7.5 million children, are in need of humanitarian support in the country, with 2.45 million children out of school, and 2 million children are at risk of malnutrition.

The phenomenon of school dropouts has become a crisis threatening Syria’s children, who have been forced by circumstances to work to earn a living for their families. Instead of being in a classroom to build their futures, children are struggling to survive in an environment left behind by conflict and displacement.

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Amir Saeid Iravani, Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations, addresses the Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East (Syria). Credit: UN Photo/ Evan Schneider

By Jennifer Xin-Tsu Lin Levine
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 30 2025 (IPS)

As sectarian violence rises in Syria, the number of displaced people has climbed exponentially since Syrian forces joined clashes between the Druze and Bedouin groups in the Sweida region.

Spokesperson for the Secretary-General Stéphane Dujarric reported in the daily press briefing this Wednesday, “More than 145,000 people have now been displaced due to hostilities in the Suweida governorate.” This marks a rise of over 50,000 people since Monday, when the spokesperson reported 93,000 displaced.

The conflict originated as a dispute between the Druze and Bedouin, two minorities in southern Syria. In Sweida, a Druze-majority city, armed government forces were deployed to quell the violence and regain control of local government structures primarily led by Druze people.

However, after Israel bombed Damascus, citing harms against Druze civilians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined a new plan to demilitarize Syrian territory from “south of Damascus and the Golan Heights to the Druze Mountain.”

This decision was widely criticized by global actors, including Secretary-General António Guterres, who called it “essential that these attacks stop and that Israel respect Syria’s sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity, and independence.”

Israel is just one of the many countries involved in Syria’s politics and violence. During the Syrian civil war, a period of general pro-democracy political uprising in the Middle East, countries like Iran and Russia backed the current regime in efforts to prevent further Western influence. Supporting various rebel groups were Turkey, the United States, and Gulf nations like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, each with their own strategic and ideological goals.

As a result, Syria has become a battleground not only for internal factions but also for foreign powers vying for regional influence—often with devastating consequences for the civilian population.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 15.8 million people across Syria were in need of humanitarian assistance as of March 2025, the highest number recorded since the conflict began in 2011. The escalating violence in Sweida further intensifies the crisis and strains an already overstretched aid network.

Medical services have been especially hard-hit. The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported that only 57 percent of hospitals and 37 percent of primary healthcare centers are operating at full capacity, many others struggling due to damaged infrastructure, medicine shortages and the departure of medical personnel.

According to UNDP assessments, there is only one doctor per 2,000 people due to migration over the past decades. Due to the sharp decline in public health spending, these flaws in healthcare infrastructure are particularly glaring in a time when violence has worsened.

However, problems in Syrian infrastructure extend beyond the immediate crisis. UNDP also reported that 30 percent to 50 percent of schools are out of service, damaged, destroyed or repurposed due to war-related destruction or lack of maintenance. Schools that are still operational often do not receive state funding for basic utilities like water, electricity, or heating.

UNICEF has raised alarms about the impact of the conflict on children. The agency estimates that over 2.4 million children are out of school, many of them having been displaced multiple times.

“Years of war and violence have shattered the lives of Syria’s children, with many enduring a lifetime of hardship,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. This has caused stagnation in Syria’s growth—without children to help rebuild infrastructure in education and healthcare, the system remains weakened.

Due to such precarious federal institutions, humanitarian access has similarly lessened. In past years, the UN Security Council has been unable to renew critical cross-border aid mechanisms due to vetoes from permanent members, leaving much of the aid delivery dependent on unstable domestic routes.

In a recent Geneva press briefing, it was confirmed that humanitarian convoys have been delayed or blocked from reaching Sweida and Daraa due to active fighting and lack of security guarantees.

As the power vacuum deepens in Syria, with the central government’s grip weakening and local militias and foreign actors carving out zones of influence, civilians are increasingly left without protection or basic services. The latest violence in Sweida illustrates the high cost of this fragmentation: an already fragile region now overwhelmed by displacement, cut off from aid, and exposed to indiscriminate attacks.

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Excerpt:

Salem Diab experiences many difficulties since he lost his leg during the Syrian civil war. Credit: Sonia al-Ali/IPS

By Sonia Al Ali
IDLIB, Syria, Apr 17 2025 (IPS)

The Syrian war has left countless Syrians with devastating injuries, ranging from limb amputations and burns to the loss of sensory functions. These injuries have profoundly impacted their lives, compounded by the limited attention and support they receive from civil society organizations.

Salam al-Hassan, 43, from Saraqib, south of Idlib city, lost both her legs in 2023 when a warplane missile exploded nearby. Since that devastating day, her life has been irrevocably altered, marked by months of arduous treatment and rehabilitation until she could walk again with prosthetic limbs. Yet, standing and moving remain a significant struggle.

“I exist on the fringes of life, overshadowed by the scarcity of treatment centers. While I was fortunate enough to receive prosthetics, I know countless other amputees who can only dream of obtaining them due to their prohibitive costs. This is compounded by the fact that many hospitals and health centers have been forced to suspend operations due to the cessation of vital support and funding,” says Al-Hassan.

Children, Victims Too

Countless Syrian children have also fallen victim to the ravages of war, sustaining injuries that have led to disabilities or the amputation of limbs. These children now face the daunting reality of living with permanent physical impairments—a burden exacerbated by the deteriorating state of healthcare services and the scarcity of essential medical supplies needed to address their unique needs.

According to UNICEF, approximately 900 children in Syria lost their lives or were injured in 2020 alone. This grim figure brings the total number of child casualties—deaths and injuries—since the beginning of the war to around 13,000. This staggering number represents approximately one-third of the total recorded injuries and deaths, leaving a multitude of children to grapple with lifelong disabilities.

Salem Al-Diyab, a 14-year-old displaced child from the city of Ma’arat al-Nu’man in the southern Idlib countryside, now resides in a camp in the town of Qah, near the Syrian-Turkish border. He sits at the entrance of his tent, watching other children in the camp as they head to school. The Syrian war has not only claimed a part of his body but has also imposed a life of disability upon him and deprived him of continuing his education.

Reflecting on his ordeal, Salem says, “My amputated leg has made me a target for bullying and mockery by my peers, which is why I stopped going to school. My left leg was amputated in late 2019 after I was struck by shrapnel from a warplane while on my way to the market to buy some necessities.”

Facing a healthcare deficit, the child found himself waiting a full year after his wound healed to receive a poor-quality prosthetic limb from a charity. This delay, attributed to the overwhelming number of patients and limited financial resources, underscores the dire circumstances.

“My son requires frequent prosthetic replacements to accommodate his growth and movement. This means he constantly needs to adapt and train with a new limb,” Salem’s mother, Alia Al-Diyab, explains. “Moreover, living below the poverty line forces us to seek out charitable organizations that provide prosthetics for free, as we cannot afford the USD 500 to USD 1,000 cost for a single artificial limb.”

Difficulty of Living With a Disability

Disability has become a difficult turning point in the lives of many affected Syrians, as they require assistance in all aspects of their lives and have lost hope of living normally.

Young Hadeel Al-Abdo, 17, from the northern Aleppo countryside, was struck by shrapnel from a shell fired by Syrian regime checkpoints in January 2021. The shrapnel hit her spinal cord, leaving her confined to a wheelchair. She needs to replace her manual wheelchair with an electric one to ease her movement and save some of the time she spends traveling to school.

“I was with my friend in front of the house when a shell fell close to us. One of the shrapnel pieces killed my friend, while another caused my paralysis. I now have to rely on a wheelchair for mobility.”

Al-Abdo says that she goes to school every day and hopes to become a doctor to alleviate the pain of the sick and war-injured. She explains that she constantly needs assistance, and her older brother accompanies her to and from school.

At first she preferred to be isolated from others. However, with encouragement from her mother and brother, she has ventured out into life and gradually begun to adapt to her disability and new situation.

Al-Abdo points out that her dream is to be able to walk, run, and live like everyone else, but she knows very well that achieving this dream has become impossible.

“I feel sad for myself when I see my friends walking and running, while I am limited to just watching them,” she adds.

Dr. Marwan Al-Hamoud, a general surgeon from the Syrian city of Homs, says, “The Syrian war wounded live amidst suffering from disability and deteriorating living conditions, facing material, social, and behavioral difficulties that prevent them from actively participating in society.”

Al-Hamoud adds that the injured and wounded are the most affected by the bloody war. “They live with their pain while still alive. Some of them have lost parts of their bodies and now rely on prosthetics or wheelchairs.”

Al-Hamoud points out that the injured need a great deal of help and assistance to alleviate their pain. They require well-equipped medical centers, as doctors often have to amputate the limbs of some patients due to the lack of necessary equipment for their treatment. Furthermore, the injured need psychological support to regain their self-confidence and efforts to secure job opportunities that suit their abilities, enabling them to play a near-normal role in society.

Psychological Scars

Psychological counselor Razan al-Barakat from the city of Idlib says disability also has psychological impacts.

“Disability does not stop at the physical level; rather, despair and frustration seep into the souls of many injured individuals when they feel different from others and unable to lead their lives normally,” al-Barakat says in an interview with IPS. “Those who are injured and have undergone amputations often feel a sense of inadequacy and helplessness, involuntarily relive memories of their injuries, and experience a lack of security and peace of mind, in addition to low self-confidence due to their need for others and dependence on them in most aspects of their lives.”

Al-Barakat emphasizes the necessity of providing psychological treatment to the injured person after their physical recovery to help them adapt to their injury and new situation. It is also crucial to sensitize society and relevant institutions about the need to care for this segment of the population that has been physically and psychologically harmed and to amplify their voices in the world to assist them and expedite their treatment.

On April 8, Human Rights Watch reported that 379 individuals have been injured by remnants of war since the fall of the regime on December 8, 2024.

A 2020 report by OCHA indicates that 36 percent of displaced Syrians are persons with disabilities. These displaced individuals with disabilities originate from areas that witnessed intense bombing by regime forces and their Russian allies, and they are distributed across northeastern and northwestern Syria.

In a report, the United Nations stated that 28 percent of Syrians inside the country are living with disabilities. This percentage includes intellectual and psychological disabilities, most of which resulted from physical injury or arose from the war conditions experienced by Syrians.

The Syrian war, which has lasted for more than 14 years, has left behind thousands of people with disabilities, often living on the margins of society, who find it difficult to access necessary services such as prosthetics, medical and psychological treatment, and rehabilitation.
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Syrian Civil Defense prepares to remove unexploded munitions of all shapes and types, including landmines. Credit: Sonia Alali/IPS

By Sonia Al Ali
IDLIB, Syria, Feb 3 2025 (IPS)

When 42-year-old Amina al-Hassan’s family returned home after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime, her son stood on a landmine.

Hassan, from Kafranbel in southern Idlib countryside, sits beside her son’s bed in the hospital after his leg was amputated following the explosion on agricultural land near their home.

“After the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime and the expulsion of its elements from our city, we went to check on our house, while my son went to inspect the agricultural land near the house. He did not notice a landmine planted among the weeds and plants, and it exploded, amputating his leg,” she told IPS.

Explosive remnants of war and landmines are scattered haphazardly across Syria, endangering the lives of civilians, hindering the return of displaced persons to their cities and villages, and obstructing their agricultural work. The frequency of explosions caused by unexploded ordnance and abandoned explosive ordnance has significantly increased following the collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime and the fading of the frontlines between the regime and the opposition, where mines and unexploded ordnance are widely dispersed.

“When I heard the explosion, I ran as fast as lightning towards the source of the sound. When I reached the explosion site, I tried to take out my son myself, but the people present at the scene prevented me from doing so. One of the engineering team specialists took charge of removing the mines around him and took him out, then we rushed him to the nearest hospital in the city,” she said, her voice tinged with sorrow.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) confirmed on January 14 that the deadly legacy of landmines and other explosives left behind by years of conflict in Syria had killed more than 100 children in December alone, urging the international community to urgently support mine clearance projects across the country.

According to the Syria Response Coordinators team, the war remnants left by the former Syrian regime continue to claim the lives of Syrians. Since December 8, 2024, explosions of mines and cluster munitions in more than 108 locations in Syria have killed 109 people, including 9 children and 6 women. More than 121 others were injured, including 48 children and one woman.

Rowan al-Kamal (46), from the western Aleppo countryside, visited her home after Syria was liberated from the Assad regime. Unlike many others, she was fortunate, not because her house was intact, but because she noticed an unexploded shell near the house. She recounts, “I moved my children away and called the Syrian Civil Defense, who worked to dismantle it. We were saved from death or injury.”

Kamal adds, “I don’t know how I spotted it amidst the rubble. When I saw it, I was rushing to check what remained of the house. I think my eyes have become accustomed to recognizing shells, as we lived with them throughout the long years of war.”

She reveals that she won’t be able to return to her home due to the presence of landmines and unexploded ordnance, despite living in a makeshift camp with her family of seven and facing extremely harsh conditions, especially with the significant drop in temperatures and the inability of humanitarian organizations to provide the displaced with necessary supplies such as food and heating.

While Kamal and her family survived injury or death, Wael al-Ahmad (22), from Has town in southern Idlib, lost his life after his city was liberated. His mother, Fatima al-Ahmad, recounts, “My son was tending to the sheep on the outskirts of the town and stepped on a landmine without noticing it, causing him severe injuries. He passed away hours later due to his injuries.”

Ahmad calls for intensified efforts to remove these remnants to prevent further casualties and ensure the safe return of the displaced. “The war remnants planted by the Syrian regime and its allies represent a delayed death for Syrians, as they threaten lives and prevent civilians from returning to their homes and farms,” she says tearfully.

Mohammed al-Saeed (32), who works on a war remnants removal team at the Syrian Civil Defense, explains, “War remnants are unexploded munitions of all shapes and types that remain in an area after the end of a war.”

He adds, “War remnants pose a real threat to Syrians in various parts of the country. They are divided into unexploded ordnance such as bombs, rockets, and shells, in addition to landmines.”

Al-Saeed clarifies that the first type is easier to remove and avoid because it can be seen and is usually found above ground. However, the biggest challenge lies in landmines that people cannot see.

Saeed further explained that Syrian government forces planted hundreds of thousands of mines in various regions of Syria, particularly in agricultural lands, military barracks, and frontline areas between the regime and the opposition. He warned that anyone returning to their town, home, or land should be aware that there may be unexploded ordnance present.

According to Saeed, Syrian Civil Defense teams conducted 822 operations to dispose of unexploded ordnance in northwestern Syria between November 27, 2024, and January 3, 2025.

He urged residents to be cautious of strange objects, to avoid touching or moving them, and to report them immediately. Meanwhile, Civil Defense engineering teams continue to conduct daily technical surveys of land contaminated with war remnants and work to dispose of munitions.

Saeed emphasized the need for the international community to work with the new Syrian government and coordinate with it to remove mines by providing funding to expand the Civil Defense’s capacity, hire more personnel, purchase more equipment, and operate in wider areas.

‘The former Syrian regime and its allied militias deliberately planted mines in vital areas, aiming to inflict the maximum number of civilian casualties. This long-term crime represents another facet of their brutal practices,” says Saeed.

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UN Secretary-General António Guterres briefs reporters on the situation in Syria. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder-Debebe

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 20 2024 (IPS)

In overthrowing Bashar al-Assad and his regime, Syria reaches the process of re-affirming its sovereignty, a process that the United Nations chief asserts must be led by the Syrian people.

On Thursday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres spoke to reporters outside the Security Council, where he affirmed the UN’s commitment to support Syria during this period of transition. Under the caretaker government, the political process should follow the principles outlined in Security Council resolution 2254, which provides a roadmap for this transition and calls for a ceasefire, the establishment of non-sectarian governance, and free and fair elections to be held within 18 months.

“All communities must be fully integrated into the new Syria,” said Guterres.

The UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pederson, was in Damascus meeting with the leaders of the factions in Syria, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), where he observed that there was “a lot of hope” among civilians for “the beginning of a new Syria.”

“A new Syria that, in line with Security Council resolution 2254, will adopt a new constitution that will ensure that there is a social contract, a new social contract for all Syrians,” said Pederson.

Pressing issues remain that require urgent action. One such issue is the high number of missing persons in Syria. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Syria reported registering over 35,000 missing persons cases, with the caveat that this number is likely much higher.

In light of this, the UN General Assembly created the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in Syria. Since its conception in June 2023, this office has been investigating the whereabouts and fates of missing persons in the country and to provide support to their family members.

UN Spokesperson for the Secretary General, Stéphane Dujarric, remarked that the issue of missing persons has been a part of the ongoing dialogue with the caretaker government. “It is such an emotional issue. Such a human issue that it should be at the forefront of everyone’s work,” said Dujarric.

Guterres announced on Thursday that Karla Quintana would be heading the institution, remarking that she and her team must be allowed to carry out their mandate. A human rights expert and legal scholar, Quintana was previously the National Commissioner for the Search of Missing Persons in Mexico from 2019 to 2023. During her tenure, she oversaw over 100,000 cases of disappearances and 70,000 unidentified bodies. She is expected to join the institution soon in Geneva, where their office is based.

The humanitarian response in Syria will also adapt during the “still rapidly shifting” conditions in the wake of the regime change. The UN and its partners have begun the rehabilitation of certain key facilities, such as hospitals and roads, in the more stable areas. Still, over 16 million people require humanitarian support. Even as humanitarian actors respond to pressing needs, issues emerge that present challenges to long-term stability. According to Dujarric, more than 1.3 million people have received food assistance since November 27. Yet, the “rapid devaluation” of Syrian currency has been impacting the availability of food.

“We need immediate humanitarian assistance, but we also need to make sure that Syria can be rebuilt, that we can see economic recovery and that we can hopefully see the beginning where we start the process to end sanctions,” said Pederson.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has called for donors to increase their funding for the humanitarian and recovery response plan. The Humanitarian Response Plan for Syria in 2024 called for USD 4.07 billion in funding, yet this has only been funded at 32 percent. The humanitarian plan for 2025 has yet to be announced.

There are also reports of hostilities in the northeast, even as the security situation is stabilizing in major cities like Damascus and Aleppo. Guterres remarked that ISIL continues to be a present threat in the country and that Israeli airstrikes have been recurring in the weeks since Assad’s departure. These attacks violate Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and they must come to an immediate end, he warned.

“This is a decisive moment—a moment of hope and history, but also one of great uncertainty,” he said. “Some will try to exploit the situation for their own narrow ends. But it is the obligation of the international community to stand with the people of Syria who have suffered so much.”

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The people walk to Saydnaya prison to search for the detainees. Credit: Abdul Karem al-Mohammad/IPS

By Sonia Al Ali
IDLIB, Syria, Dec 16 2024 (IPS)

Detained without trial for over three years for trial for allegedly treating “terrorists” (as opponents of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were deemed), Alaa al-Khalil, a 33-year-old nurse from the Syrian city of Hama, recounts the agony of her time in a prison cell she shared with at least 35 women.

She was released from Aydnaya prison on December 8 after the fall of the Assad regime.

Following the fall of Assad’s regime and his escape to Moscow on December 8, armed opposition factions managed to open the doors of prisons, freeing hundreds of detainees who had endured the most horrific forms of torture for opposing Assad’s rule and demanding his removal from power. Many lost their lives within the prisons and were buried in mass graves, while the families of the detainees continue to search for their missing loved ones in the prisons of tyranny.

Years of Torture

“I was arrested at a security checkpoint belonging to the former Syrian regime and transferred to the Political Security Branch in Damascus—my hands were cuffed, and my eyes were blindfolded. In prison, we were 35 women in a small, cramped room with the toilet in the same room, without any privacy,” Khalil told IPS. “The marks of severe torture were clearly visible on some of the women. As for sleep, we would lie on the floor and take turns sleeping due to the very small size of the room. The most painful thing was that there were many pregnant women who gave birth to children who grew up inside the prison.”

The search for survivors in Sednaya prison. Credit: Abdul Karem al-Mohammad/IPS

During that time, she said the prisoners suffered from “hunger, cold, and all forms of torture, including beatings, burning with cigarettes, and nail pulling.”

Many of the female detainees were raped and exposed to sexual violence as a form of punishment. After midnight, the guards would come to the detainees’ room to select the most beautiful girls to take them to the officers’ rooms.

“We preferred torture and even death to rape. When a girl refused to have sex or confess to the charges against her during interrogation, she would be killed by the guards or interrogators, and her body would be thrown into the salt room, which was prepared in advance to preserve the bodies of the dead for as long as possible,” she said, tearfully remembering the daily trauma.

Khalil confirms that prisoners were not allowed to look at the guards, talk, or make any noise, even during torture. They were punished by being deprived of water or forced to sleep naked without covers in the freezing cold. The meals consisted of a few bites of spoilt food, and many people contracted serious infections, diseases, and mental disorders.

Now released, Khalil hopes to enjoy safety, stability, and peace in this country after years of oppression and injustice.

Adnan al-Ibrahim, 46, from the southern Syrian city of Daraa, was also released a few days ago from Adra prison on the outskirts of Damascus after spending over 10 years there on charges of defecting from Bashar al-Assad’s army and seeking asylum in Lebanon.

“I feel like I’m dreaming after being released from prison. They accused me of terrorism, subjected me to torture, and I was never brought before a court during my imprisonment. I’m still traumatized by what I endured,” Ibrahim says.

“We were subjected to the worst treatment imaginable in prisons. All we want now is the right to live a decent life, far from injustice, arbitrary arrests, and the ongoing killing in Syria.”

He is now emaciated and weak—his weight drastically reduced due to malnutrition and poor diet. Most of his fellow inmates suffered from life-threatening illnesses as a result of the torture they endured. Many inmates lost their memory due to being beaten on the head during interrogations, and the bodies of the dead remained for long periods before being removed. Many of these bodies were disposed of by burning.

Burdened by Psychological Prauma

Samah Barakat, a 33-year-old mental health specialist, says the survivors of Syrian detention centres will need help to overcome their traumas.

‘The experience of imprisonment and torture in prisons is painful and traumatic for survivors. Imprisonment is not limited to physical torture; the mental state is also affected. Prisoners were subjected to various forms of torture and oppression, leading to a significant deterioration in their mental health. These effects include a range of psychological disorders such as psychosis, memory loss, and speech impediments, in addition to the spread of diseases due to their deprivation of basic medical care.”

Barakat confirms that some detainees are likely to suffer from physical, psychological, and behavioural effects, accompanied by constant anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal.

She explains that survivors of detention need psychological support, which varies depending on the impact of the detention experience. Some need psychological counseling or therapy sessions with specialists, while others require medication prescribed by a psychiatrist due to depression or other mental illnesses.

An Unknown Fate

For some, the uncertainty of the fates of their loved ones means the trauma of the Asad regime lives on.

Alaa al-Omar, 52, from the northern Syrian city of Idlib, went to Saydnaya prison and the Palestine Branch in Damascus after the fall of the Assad regime, hoping to find his son, who had disappeared in the prison’s depths.

“I went to the prison with great longing, but I found no trace of my son. I think he died as a result of torture.”

Omar affirms that his son was arrested by the Assad regime forces in 2015 while studying at a university in Aleppo, accused of participating in demonstrations, carrying weapons, and joining the opposition factions.

Omar indicates he heard nothing from his son or about his son since his arrest, and his fate remains unknown even now.

Human Rights Violations

Human rights activist Salim Al-Najjar (41), from Aleppo, speaks about the suffering of survivors of detention and told IPS that the history of building prisons and expanding detention centers in Syria dated back to the rule of Hafez al-Assad, whose regime in the 1980s exercised excessive force against its opponents, turning the country into a “large slaughterhouse.”

“In the regime’s prisons, lives are as equal as stones in the hands of a sculptor, killed and discarded without regard or importance. In them, a person becomes a mere number, with their history, feelings, and even dreams that haunted them until the last moment of their lives ignored,” Najjar says.

Al-Najjar confirms the existence of many prisons in Syria, but the Saydnaya prison, located north of the Syrian capital Damascus, is known as the most prominent political detention center in Syria and was notorious for its horrific reputation as a site of torture and mass executions, especially after the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in 2011. Saydnaya prison was where Assad’s detained opponents or defectors from his army or those who rejected his “killing policy.”

He points out that few detainees were released through family connections or bribes, while the detainees were left to die from their untreated wounds and diseases in “dirty, overcrowded” cells.

He notes that many detainees emerged from behind bars suffering from a loss of their mental faculties, unable to remember their names or identify themselves, and due to the severe changes caused by malnutrition and brutal torture, their features had changed to the point that their families did not recognize them at first.

Najjar hopes to achieve justice for the victims by presenting evidence and documents to international courts and holding Assad and all perpetrators of violations in Syria accountable.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights said in a statement on December 11 that Assad is accused of killing at least 202,000 Syrian civilians, including 15,000 killed under torture, the disappearance of 96,000 others, and the forced displacement of nearly 13 million Syrian citizens, as well as other heinous violations, including the use of chemical weapons.

“Syrian detention centers and torture chambers symbolize the agony, oppression, and suffering that Syrians have endured for decades. Survivors of detention continue to heal their wounds and strive to return to their normal lives and reintegrate into society. Sadly, a significant number of them have perished under torture.”

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Samah Al-Ibrahim is unable to provide milk for her child. Babies born to internally displaced families in the camps in the northern countryside of Idlib are desperate for a regular supply of food and milk supplements for their children. Credit: Sonia al-Ali/IPS

By Sonia Al Ali
IDLIB, Syria, Oct 23 2024 (IPS)

Children in northern Syria are suffering from hunger, illness, and malnutrition as a result of poverty, poor living conditions for most families, and the collapse of purchasing power amid the soaring prices of all essential food commodities. Displacement and a lack of job opportunities make this worse.

Nour al-Hammoud, a 5-year-old girl whose family was displaced from Maarat al-Numan, south of Idlib, to a makeshift camp in the northern countryside of Idlib, near the Syrian-Turkish border, suffers from acute malnutrition. She is extremely thin. 

“My daughter’s immunity is very weak; she suffers from stunted growth and constant illness. We cannot provide her with the nutrients she needs due to our poverty. My husband is unemployed because of a war injury, and humanitarian aid in this camp is almost nonexistent,” her mother, who did not want to be named, says.

The mother indicates that she took her daughter to a pediatrician at a health center more than 5 km from the camp, and the doctor confirmed that the girl was suffering from malnutrition and prescribed medication and supplements, but these haven’t yet made a difference. The mother confirmed that her daughter’s condition is deteriorating day by day, and she is helpless to do anything for her.

Samah al-Ibrahim, 33, from the city of Idlib, northern Syria, is also unable to afford formula milk for her 9-month-old baby, which has affected his growth and health. She says, “My husband works in construction all day for USD 3. We can barely afford our basic necessities, so we can’t buy milk on many days, especially since I can’t breastfeed due to malnutrition myself.”

Al-Ibrahim confirms that she relies on cooking starch with sugar or boiling rice to feed her son, as milk is not available daily.

As for Sanaa al-Barakat, 35, she has been living in a state of severe anxiety after discovering that her 2-year-old daughter, Rim, is suffering from acute malnutrition and stunted growth and it is critical she gets care immediately.

“The doctor diagnosed her with severe malnutrition, which caused brain atrophy and delayed the acquisition of motor skills. She also suffers from difficulty speaking as well as lethargy and refuses to play like other children. Additionally, she is introverted,” al-Barakat.

She said her daughter Rim is not the only one suffering from malnutrition, but all of her four children are as well, because she finds it very difficult to provide her children with the necessary food supplies. She often only manages to feed them one meal a day.

Dr. Nour Al-Abbas (39), a pediatrician from Sarmada, north of Idlib, speaks about malnutrition, saying, “It is a serious health condition where children suffer from a deficiency in the essential nutrients their bodies need, causing them symptoms and signs that vary in severity and danger.”

She confirms that a quarter of children in Idlib suffer from malnutrition due to not getting enough nutritious food due to a lack of and of dietary diversity, which makes them susceptible to disease and weakens their immune systems.”

The doctor explains that the number of children she receives at the health center where she works is increasing. Al-Abbas says the mothers are also often suffering from malnutrition. The conditions the families live in are a result of poverty as a result of displacement due to war, the large number of children in one family, and the inability of mothers to breastfeed.

The spread of infectious diseases among children and reliance on contaminated and unclean drinking water exacerbate the situation. Often the mothers continue attempting to cope without consulting a doctor and when they do finally seek health, the children’s condition is poor.

Al-Abbas points out that the groups most at risk of malnutrition are children after the breastfeeding period, i.e., from the age of 6 months to 6 years. However, some mothers are reluctant to breastfeed their children for several reasons, the most important of which is the mother’s suffering from malnutrition as well.

“Malnutrition has different symptoms, the most important of which are severe weakness and feeling constantly tired, in addition to the child not gaining weight and height with pale skin and yellowing, or the appearance of edema or continuous inflammatory conditions such as dermatitis or peeling around the lips or abdominal distension (bloating),” Al-Abbas says.

The doctor called for additional support from charities and NGOs in an effort to provide food and medicine through field visits to camps.

According to UNICEF estimates, 9 out of 10 children in Syria do not consume minimally acceptable diets, leading to stunting and wasting. As many as 506,530 children under the age of five in Idlib, Syria, and northern rural Aleppo urgently need treatment for acute malnutrition, and nearly 108,000 children suffer from severe wasting. Disease prevalence, a lack of food, and inadequate sanitation services all make the situation worse.

In addition, over 609,900 children under the age of five in Syria suffer from stunting, according to UNICEF estimates. Stunting results from chronic malnutrition and causes irreversible physical and cognitive damage in children. This impacts their ability to learn and their productivity in adulthood.

According to the “Syria Response Coordinators” team, which specializes in statistics in northwestern Syria, the percentage of families below the poverty line is 91.18 percent, while the percentage of families below the hunger line has reached 41.05 percent. All families residing in the region’s widespread camps have been classified as entirely below the poverty line.

Poverty, displacement, and inflation have increased the prevalence of malnutrition among Syrian children, stunting their growth due to the lack of sufficient essential nutrients for their bodies to grow, negatively impacting them and depriving them of their most basic rights.

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Sarah Al-Hassan lost her baby due to the lack of care in the camps. Credit: Sonia Al Ali/IPS

By Sonia Al Ali
IDLIB, Syria, Aug 22 2024 (IPS)

Pregnant women in northern Syria’s camps for internally displaced people fear about their health and the health of their unborn children because of a lack of basic medical care and a healthy diet. These conditions exacerbate the illnesses and challenges faced by women, particularly amid the region’s widespread poverty, food insecurity, and the remoteness of hospitals and health centers from the camps.

Pregnant women in the camps are susceptible to anemia, malnutrition, and giving birth to stunted children if they survive. The delay in obtaining care poses a significant health risk to both pregnant women and their infants.

Fatima Al-Aboud, a 26-year-old displaced woman living in the Ma’arat Misrin camp north of Idlib, is six months pregnant and suffering from severe anemia, which threatens both her health and that of her fetus.

“The doctor told me that I need to eat a balanced diet in sufficient quantities throughout my pregnancy to maintain my health and that of my fetus, but poverty and high prices have made me unable to buy fruits and vegetables rich in vitamins and proteins. I am also unable to afford the necessary medications for pregnant women.”

Al-Aboud does not hide her fear of giving birth to a child in poor health due to malnutrition or of her labor starting without a car available to transport her to the hospital, especially since the road between the camp and health centers is poor and rugged and it is more than five kilometers away.

Pregnant women face health risks in the camps. Credit: Sonia Al Ali/IPS

“I have many fears, as there are no comfortable places to sit or sleep inside the tent, and I cannot get physical rest during pregnancy. As a pregnant woman, I do not have a private space or clean toilets,” Al-Aboud told IPS.

The health risks faced by pregnant women increase due to the distance of health centers and hospitals from the camps, exposing them to the risk of miscarriage and even death during childbirth, along with the possibility of premature births.

The Syria Response Coordinators team, which specializes in gathering information and statistics in the areas of northwestern Syria, reports that more than 87 percent of the camps suffer from a lack of medical points and mobile clinics, and there are difficulties in transporting patients to nearby hospitals, knowing that the financial condition of most of the displaced is very poor and they are unable to secure the necessary treatment for any medical condition without exception.

Sara Al-Hassan, a 31-year-old displaced woman in a makeshift camp north of Syria near the Turkish border and a mother of three, lost her baby during childbirth.

“I started labor after midnight, and due to the distance of the hospitals from the camp and the lack of transportation, I relied on a nurse who lived nearby.”

She says that her delivery was difficult, and her baby was in critical condition and urgently needed an incubator. While being transported to a hospital, the baby passed away.

Al-Hassan confirms that she no longer wants to have children and relies on contraception to avoid repeating the experience of pregnancy and childbirth within the camps. She added that her life in the tent is harsh, as she lacks clean drinking water, bathing water, and food. She wouldn’t be able to provide for the needs of newborn babies as there is a significant shortage of personal hygiene items.

“Stress, anxiety, and overthinking dominate my life, and I feel helpless towards my three children who are living in difficult conditions, but despite that, I try my best to take care of their cleanliness and provide for their needs,” Al-Hassan says.

Dr. Ola Al-Qudour, a specialist in obstetrics and gynecology from Idlib city in northwestern Syria, talks about the suffering of pregnant women in northern Syria’s camps.

“Thousands of Syrian pregnant women live in camps in harsh conditions, as most of them cannot provide the necessities of food and medicine. Malnutrition leads to health problems that affect both the pregnant woman and the fetus and exposes the mother to a decrease in milk after childbirth, making her unable to breastfeed her child.”

Al-Qudour points out that the lack of hospitals within the camps increases the suffering of pregnant women, forcing most cases to move outside, confirming that displaced women live in tents made of cloth, and those who give birth in the hospital often return to the tent after only a few hours due to hospital congestion, knowing that the first 24 hours after childbirth are the most critical in terms of complications, so it is important to keep the mother in the hospital for as long as possible.

She confirms that low levels of hygiene make pregnant women more susceptible to influenza due to a decrease in their immunity, and that pregnant women who don’t get enough sleep can also expose them to early labor as well as affect the growth of the child after birth. She also indicates that non-sterile home births increase the risk of infection in newborns and mothers.

The doctor emphasizes the need to provide healthcare services for pregnant women and newborns in the camps, including regular medical check-ups and early diagnosis of any health problems, and providing the necessary care and nutrition for mothers during pregnancy, childbirth, and afterwards.

With the continuation of the war and displacement, more than two million people still reside in camps in northwestern Syria, including 604,000 women.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says as many as “660 camps (44 percent of over 1,500 camps) across Idleb and northern Aleppo do not have water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) support, affecting over 907,000 people. Half of them are children.”

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Children eating and drinking at the Children's House in Idlib. Abandoned children is a growing issue in the region. Credit: Sonia Al-Ali/IPS

By Sonia Al Ali
IDLIB, Syria, Mar 27 2024 (IPS)

Wael Al-Hassan was returning from work in the Syrian city of Harim when he heard the sound of a baby crying.

He was returning from work on December 10, 2023. He stopped momentarily, turned on his mobile phone flashlight to investigate, and spotted a baby girl, around one month old, wrapped in a white blanket, lying by the roadside.

He felt saddened by the infant’s condition and said, “She was crying loudly, and I saw scratches on her face from cat or dog claws. I then carried her in my arms and took her home, where my wife breastfed her, changed her clothes, and took care of her.”

The phenomenon of abandoning newborns is increasing in northern Syria, where individuals leave their newborns in public parks or alongside roads, then leave the area. Passersby later find the infants, some of them dead from hunger or cold.

Al-Hassan said that the next morning, he handed the baby girl over to the police to search for her family and relatives.

Social Rejection

Social worker Abeer Al-Hamoud from the city of Idlib, located in northern Syria, attributes the primary reason for some families abandoning their children to the widespread poverty and high population density in the province. Additionally, there is fear of the security situation (the area is not in the control of the Syrian regime and is often under attack), the prevalence of divorces, and spouses abandoning their families after traveling abroad.

Al-Hamoud also points out another reason, which is the spread of the phenomenon of early marriage and marrying girls to foreign fighters who came from their countries to Syria to participate in combat. Under pressure from their families, wives often have to abandon their children after their husband’s death, sudden disappearance, or return to their homeland, especially when they are unable to care for them or provide for them financially. Moreover, these children have no proper documentation of parentage.

Furthermore, Al-Hamoud mentions another reason, which is some women are raped, leading them to abandon their newborns out of fear of punishment from their families or societal stigma.

Al-Hamoud warns that the number of abandoned children is increasing and says there is an urgent need to find solutions to protect them from exploitation, oppression, and societal discrimination they may face. She emphasizes that the solutions lie in returning displaced persons to their homes, improving living conditions for families, raising awareness among families about the importance of family planning, and launching campaigns to integrate these children into society.

Alternative Families

It’s preferable for members of the community to accept these children into their families, but they face difficulties in registering the births.

Thirty-nine-year-old Samaheer Al-Khalaf from the city of Sarmada in northern Idlib province, Syria, sponsored a newborn found abandoned at a park gate, and she welcomed him into her family.

She says, “After 11 years of marriage to my cousin, we were not blessed with children, so we decided to raise a child found in the city at the beginning of 2022.”

Al-Khalaf observes that the Islamic religion’s prohibition on “adoption” prevents her from registering the child under her name in the civil registry. Additionally, she cannot go to areas controlled by the Syrian regime to register him due to the presence of security barriers.

She says, “I fear for this child’s future because he will remain of unknown lineage. He will live deprived of his civil rights, such as education and healthcare, and he won’t be able to obtain official documents.”

Children’s House Provides Assistance

With the increasing numbers of children of unknown parentage, volunteers have opened a center to receive and care for the children abandoned by their families.

Younes Abu Amin, the director of Children’s House, says, “A child of unknown parentage is one who was found and whose father is unknown, or children whose parentage has not been proven and who have no provider.”

“The organization ‘Children’s House’ opened a center to care for children separated from their families and children of unknown parentage in the city of Sarmada, north of Idlib,” says Abu Amin. “The number of registered children in the center has reached 267, ranging in age from one day to 18 years. Some have been placed with foster families, while others currently reside in the center, receiving all their needs, including shelter, food, education, and healthcare.”

Upon arrival at the center, Abu Amin notes that the center registers each child in its records, transfers them to the shelter department, and makes efforts to locate their original family or relatives and send them to them or to find a foster family to provide them with a decent life.

Abu Amin explains that the center employs 20 staff members who provide children with care, psychological support, and education. They work to create a suitable environment for the children and support them psychologically to help with emotional support.

He emphasizes that the center survives on individual donations to cover its expenses – which are scarce. There is an urgent need for sufficient support, as the children require long-term care, especially newborns.

A young girl Marah (8) and her brother, Kamal (10), lost their father in the war. Their mother remarried, leaving them to live in a small tent with their grandfather, who forces them to beg and sell tissues, often leaving them without food for days.

Consequently, they decided to escape from home. Kamal says, “We used to sleep outdoors, overwhelmed by fear, cold, and hunger, until someone took us to the child center.”

Upon reaching the center, they returned to their studies, played with other children, and each other, just like children with families.

Kamal expresses his wish, “I hope to continue my education with my sister so we can rely on ourselves and escape from a life of injustice and deprivation.”

These children, innocent of any wrongdoing, are often left to fend for themselves, bearing the brunt of war-induced poverty, insecurity, homelessness, instability, and early marriage.

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Earthquake orphans are cared for at the Kuramaa Center in the Idlib Governorate, Northern Syria. Credit: Sonia Al Ali/IPS

By Sonia Al Ali
IDILIB, SYRIA, Oct 13 2023 (IPS)

Seven-year-old Salim al-Bakkar was orphaned in the earthquake that struck southern Turkey and northern Syria on February 6, 2023.

Saved by members of the civil defense team who pulled him from the rubble, doctors had to amputate his left leg – which had been crushed in the 7.7 magnitude quake that killed more than 55,000 people and destroyed at least 230,000 buildings. 

Salim, from Jenderes, north of Aleppo, Syria, was pulled from the rubble but, suffering from crush syndrome, had his leg amputated.

His only surviving relative, his grandmother Farida al-Bakkar, tells IPS of the pain and the sadness of caring for her grandchild.

“When my grandson woke up and saw me, he asked me about his mother, but I could not tell him that his mother and father had died because he was devastated.”

Salim is not alone; thousands of children survived without their families and now experience loneliness, psychological stress, and physical pain.

Even seven months after the earthquake, the fear Salim felt that day has remained engraved in his memory, according to his grandmother.

Dr Kamal Al-Sattouf, from Idlib, in northern Syria, says the earthquake resulted in many diseases.

“Thousands of buildings were completely and partially destroyed as a result of the earthquake, while the infrastructure of water and sanitation networks in the regions was damaged, increasing the risk of epidemics and infectious diseases such as cholera.”

The doctor stressed the spread of respiratory diseases, such as lung infections, especially among children and the elderly, and diarrhea of all kinds, viral and bacterial, cholera, and malaria, due to vectors spreading among the rubble, such as mosquitoes, flies, mice, and rodents.

Al-Sattouf said that people pulled alive from the rubble were often also affected by what is known as ‘crush syndrome.’ The hospital where he works received many cases, the severity of which is often related to the time the survivors spent under the rubble, usually made up of heavy cement blocks.

According to the doctor, crush syndrome results when force or compression from the collapsed buildings cuts off blood circulation to parts of the body or the limbs.

Psychological Impacts

A 10-year-old girl, Salma Al-Hassan, from Harem, in northern Syria, keeps asking to visit her old house destroyed by the earthquake. This was where she lost her mother and her sister.

Her father explains: “My daughter suffers from a bad psychological condition that is difficult to overcome. With panic attacks, fear, and continuous crying, she refuses to believe that her mother and sister are dead.”

He points out that his daughter became withdrawn after she witnessed the horrors of the earthquake. She loves to be alone and refuses to talk to others. She also refuses to go to school.

He and his daughter were extracted alive from under the rubble more than 8 hours after the earthquake.

Dalal Al-Ali, a psychological counselor from Sarmada, Northern Syria, told IPS: “Many people who survived the earthquake disaster, especially children, still suffer from anxiety disorders and depression, which is one of the problems. Symptoms of this disorder are persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness, loss of interest in activities, and changes in appetite and sleep patterns.”

She pointed out that the child victims of the earthquake urgently need psychosocial support in addition to life-saving aid, including clean water, sanitation, nutrition, necessary medical supplies, and mental health support for children, both now and in the long term.

Al-Ali stresses the need to provide an atmosphere of safety and comfort for children and to establish a sense of security and protection by moving them to a safe place as far as possible from the site of danger, in addition to providing group therapy and individual therapy sessions for parents, as well as for children, to help them overcome anxiety, and allow them to express their feelings by practicing sports and the arts.

She confirms that children need more attention than adults in overcoming the impacts of the earthquake because children saw their whole world collapse before their eyes and continue to feel the trauma acutely.

Victims of Earthquake, also Victims of Syrian Conflict

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, in a report published earlier this year, said it had documented the deaths of 6,319 Syrians due to the earthquake.

Of these, 2,157 victims were killed in areas of Syria not under the control of the Syrian regime and 321 in areas controlled by the Syrian regime. regime, while 3,841 Syrian refugees died in Turkey.

The group stressed the need to investigate the reason for the delays in the response of the United Nations and the international community because this led to more preventable deaths of Syrian people – and those responsible for the delays should be held accountable.

The network says the high death toll was in a highly populated area because of internal displacement due to conflict within the Syrian regime.

Even more tragically, the report adds, these traumatized people had to live through the horrors of indiscriminate bombing by the Syrian regime in the IDP camps in which they live.

With the aim of caring for the earthquake orphans in Idlib Governorate, Northern Syria, the (Basmat Nour) Foundation opened the Kuramaa Center to take care of the children.

The director of the Kuramaa Center, Muhammad Al-Junaid, says to IPS: “Many children lost their families and loved ones during the devastating earthquake, so we opened this center that provides care for orphaned children, and provides all their educational requirements, psychological support activities, and entertainment.

There are now 52 children at the center, which can take up to 100.

Al-Junaid added: “The staff work hard to put a smile on the children’s faces, and our goal is to make them forget the pain that they cannot bear and take care of them by all possible means to live a normal life in a family.”

Eight-year-old Fatima Al-Hassan, from Idlib, lost her entire family in the earthquake. She lives in the center and has found tenderness and care.

“I spend my time teaching, drawing, and playing with my peers in the care home.”

But Fatima still remembers her family with love and sadness.
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Just another day in the main hall of the Qamishli campus. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
QAMISHLI, Syria, Sep 27 2022 (IPS)

There is a main hall as well as workshops, laboratories and, of course, a cafeteria, where the half-hour break flies by amid card games and laughs. It could well be any university if it wasn’t for those men armed with assault rifles at the entrance.

This is the campus of University of Rojava in Qamishli (700 kilometres northeast of Damascus), an institution that opened its doors in October 2016, in the midst of a war that still rages on.

The Kurdish minority in Syria coexists with Arabs and Syriacs in the so-called Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). It's in this corner of Syria, which shares borders with both Turkey and Iraq, where such a network of universities has been built. It now rivals the institutions of the Syrian Arab Republic government

“Lessons in the Kurdish language are one of our hallmarks,” Rohan Mistefa, the former dean, tells IPS from an office on the second floor. Other than the language of instruction, significant differences from other Syrian universities are also visible in the curriculum.

“We got rid of subjects such as Ideology and History of the Baath Party (in power in Damascus since 1963) and replaced it with `Democratic Culture,'” explains this Kurdish woman in her mid-forties. The creation of a Department of Science for Women (Jineoloij, in Kurdish), she adds, has been another milestone.

The University of Rojava hosts around 2,000 students on three campuses. There are, however, two other active universities in Syria’s northeast: Kobani, working since 2017, and Al- Sharq in Raqqa. The latter has been operating since last year in a city that was once the capital of the Islamic State in Syria.

“Unlike the universities of Kobani and Rojava, in Raqqa they study in Arabic because the majority of citizens there are Arabs,” says Mistefa, who is today co-responsible for coordinating between the three institutions.

Mustefa has been closely linked to the institution since its inception. She helped to found the first Kurdish university in Syria in her native district of Afrin in 2015. That pioneering initiative had to close its doors in 2018: territorially disconnected from the rest of the Kurdish Syrian territories, Afrin was taken over by Ankara-backed Islamist militias. It remains under occupation to this day.

“Many people ask us why we open schools and universities in the middle of the war. I always tell them that ours is a culture of building, and not that of destroying our neighbours and their allies”, says the Kurdish woman.

Ideologues and martyrs of the Kurdish cause are also present on the walls of the University of Rojava. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

The Kurds call “Rojava” (“west”) their native land in northeast Syria. In the wake of the so-called “Arab spring” uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, Kurds opted for what was then known as the “third way”: neither with the government nor with the opposition.

Twelve years on, the Kurdish minority in Syria coexists with Arabs and Syriacs in the so-called Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). It’s in this corner of Syria, which shares borders with both Turkey and Iraq, where such a network of universities has been built. It now rivals the institutions of the Syrian Arab Republic government.

A “titanic task”

After the opening of the first Kurdish-language schools in the history of Syria, the University of Rojava is one more step forward in a revolution that has placed education among its main values.

It consists of nine faculties that offer free academic training in various Engineering branches, as well as Medicine, Law, Educational Sciences, Administration and Finance, Journalism and, of course, Kurdish Philology.

“I chose Philology because I love writing poems in Kurdish; I am very much into folklore, literature… everything that has to do with our culture,” Tolen Kenjo, a second-year student from the neighbouring city of Hasaka tells IPS.

The 19-year old still remembers being punished at school whenever she would utter a word in her mother tongue. For more than four decades, the ban on the Kurdish language in Syria was just another chapter within an ambitious assimilation plan that also included the displacement of the country’s Kurdish population and even the deprivation of citizenship of tens of thousands of them.

The cafeteria during the half-hour break. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

Today, the university’s walls are covered with posters: climate maps, the photosynthesis cycle, quotes from the Russian classics. For the first time in Syria, all are in the Kurdish language. The corridors get crammed with students during the breaks between classes, often amid the laughter that comes from a group of students playing volleyball in the courtyard.

In the Department of English Language and Translation, we find Jihan Ayo, a Kurdish woman who has been teaching here for more than three years. Ayo is one of the more than 200,000 displaced (UN figures) who arrived from Serekaniye in 2019, when the Kurdish district was invaded by Islamist militias under Ankara´s wing.

“Turkey’s attacks or those by cells of the Islamic State are still a common currency here,” Ayo tells IPS. When it comes to lessons, she points to a “titanic task.”

Work is still underway to translate teaching materials into Kurdish — to train not only students but also those who will become their teachers. Among other things, Ayo remembers those “very tough” 18 months during which the pandemic forced lessons to be suspended.

“We tried to cope with things online; we got help from volunteer teachers from practically all over the world, but, of course, not everyone here has the means to connect to the Internet…”

She also faces a fight to gain the trust of many local citizens, towards an educational network that has no recognition outside this corner of Syria. Although the Kurdish administration administers the region, the “official” schools -those ran by Damascus- continue to function and, of course, they stick to the pre-war curriculum.

Teaching in the middle of a war has been one of the challenges faced by the Syrian Kurds. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

Recognition

In a comprehensive report published in September 2022 on the university system in northeast Syria, Rojava researchers Information Center (an independent press organization) stress the importance of international recognition that can make the institution more attractive to students.

“While the quality of the education received at these universities in itself is comparable to other institutions’ in the region, the lack of recognition abroad may make it impossible for the students to continue their studies outside of Syria, find employment abroad, or even have their technical knowledge recognized by companies and institutions not tied to the AANES,” the report warns.

It also claimks that the University of Rojava maintains cooperation agreements with at least eight foreign universities, including Washington State University (U.S.), Emden/Leer University of Applied Sciences (Germany) and the University of Parma (Italy)..

It´s just a ten-minute walk from the campus to the headquarters of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the dominant political party among Kurds in Syria. From his office, PYD co-chairman Salih Muslim wanted to highlight the role of universities as “providers of necessary cadres to build and develop the places they belong to and come from.”

“Our universities are ready to cooperate and exchange experiences with all the universities and international institutions to gain more experience and they are welcome to do so,” Muslim told IPS.

Despite the lack of international recognition, academic life goes on in this corner of Syria. Noreldin Hassan arrived from Afrin after the 2018 invasion and today is about to fulfil his dream of graduating in Journalism. The 27-year-old tells IPS that his university is “working in the right direction” to achieve international recognition. However, he has chosen not to wait for a degree to begin his career, and he has been working as a reporter for eight years already .

“Getting a diploma is important, but, at the end of the day, journalists learn by sheer practice while looking for stories and covering those,” stresses the young man.

The last story he covered? One about those women forced to marry mercenaries on a Turkish payroll. The story he´d like to cover the most? No surprises here:

“The day when the Kurds of Afrin can finally go back home.”

Rohingya refugee girl Rohima Akter, 13, is excited about learning to write in the Burmese language in the UNICEF learning centre in Cox's Bazar.​ ​The new curriculum provides Rohingya refugee children with formal and standardized education.​ Credit: UNICEF Bangladesh

By Joyce Chimbi
United Nations, Aug 23 2022 (IPS)

Syrian refugee children are among the most disadvantaged in Iraq. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, only 53 percent of school-aged Syrian refugee children in the country were enrolled.

Across the globe, in Bangladesh, more than 890 000 Rohingya refugees live in 34 congested camps in Cox’s Bazar. COVID, fire, monsoons, floods, and landslides impacted education.

In Nigeria, since the conflict began in north-eastern Nigeria in 2013, at least 2,295 teachers have been killed, more than 1,000 children abducted, and 1,400 schools destroyed.

Yet, Education Cannot Wait, the global fund for United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, believes that progress can be made to prevent the children from Syria, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Chad, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Pakistan, and South Sudan among other regions, from falling off the education system and consequently missing out on lifelong learning and earning opportunities.

“There is no dream more powerful than that of an education. There is no reality more compelling than to attain one’s full potential. We must keep our promise: to provide inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, as enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG4) and Human Rights Conventions,” says Gordon Brown, the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

“While progress is being made, we still have a long way to go. Today, we are faced with the cruel reality of 222 million children and adolescents worldwide in wars and disasters in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America who need urgent financial investments to access a quality education.”

This progress has now been documented in ECW’s We Have Promises to Keep: Annual Results Report released today. The annual report comes on the back of ECW’s estimates laying bare the plight of crisis-impacted children and adolescents and how this plight remains less visible to the global community.

A young girl in her classroom in Yemen, where an ECW-funded programme is supporting educators and students by improving access to quality education. Credit: Building Foundation for Development Yemen

According to ECW, 222 million school-aged children and adolescents caught in crises urgently need educational support. These include 78.2 million who are out of school and 119.6 million who are in school but not achieving minimum competencies in mathematics and reading.

Worst still, an estimated 65.7 million of these out-of-school children—or 84 percent—live in protracted crises, with about two-thirds or 65 percent of them in just ten countries, including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Yemen.

Conflict, forced displacement, climate-induced disasters, and the compounding effect of the COVID-19 pandemic fueled increased education in emergency needs, with funding appeal of US$2.9 billion in 2021, compared with US$1.4 billion in 2020.

While 2021 saw a record-high US$645 million in education funding—the overall funding gap spiked by 17 percent, from 60 percent in 2020 to 77 percent in 2021, according to the newly-released annual report.

“ECW’s solid results in our first five years of operation are proof of concept that we can turn the tide and empower the most marginalized girls and boys in crises with the hope, protection, and opportunity of quality education. We can make their dreams come true, whether it’s to become a nurse, a teacher, an engineer, or a scientist,” said Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait.

“With our strategic partners, we urge governments, businesses, and philanthropic actors to make substantive funding contributions to ECW to help turn dreams into reality for children left furthest behind in crises.”

Towards delivering the promise of lifelong learning and earning opportunities, the report shows ECW investments with strategic partners reached close to 7 million children and adolescents, 48.4 percent of whom are girls, since becoming operational in 2017.

Despite the ongoing multiple and complex challenges of COVID-19, conflict, protracted crises, and climate-related disasters, the annual report reveals that the fund and its partners continue to expand the response to education in emergencies and protracted crises globally.

In 2021 alone, ECW mobilized a record-breaking US$388.6 million. Total contributions to the ECW Trust Fund are now top US$1.1 billion.

Across 19 countries supported through ECW’s Multi-Year Resilience Programmes, donors and partners mobilized more than US$1 billion in new funding for education programmes.

Through its strategic partnerships, ECW reached 3.7 million children and adolescents across 32 crisis-impacted countries in 2021 alone, including 48.9 percent girls. An additional 11.8 million children and adolescents were reached through the fund’s COVID-19 interventions that same year, bringing the total number of children and adolescents supported by COVID-19 interventions to 31.2 million, of which 52 percent are girls.

But these highlights are tempered by concerns over an increase in the scale, severity, and protracted nature of conflicts and crises, continued attacks on education, and record-high displacements driven by climate change, conflicts, and other emergencies.

For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly deepened the global learning crisis. In 2020 and 2021 alone, 147 million children missed over half of in-person instruction, and as many as 24 million learners may never return to school, according to UN estimates.

These challenges notwithstanding, the report provides more evidence of progress made by focusing on quality learning outcomes for the most marginalized children in crises. Of all children reached by ECW’s investments to date, half are girls, and 43 percent are refugees or internally displaced children.

Additionally, ECW grants indicate “improved levels of academic and or social-emotional learning; 53 percent of grants that measure learning levels showcase solid evidence of increased learning levels compared to 23 percent of grants active in 2020.”

Overall, the share of children reached with early childhood and secondary education increased substantially. Early childhood education increased from 5 percent in 2019 to 9 percent in 2021. Secondary education increased from 3 percent to 11 percent for the same period.

On inclusivity, estimates show that 92 percent of ECW-supported programmes demonstrated an improvement in gender parity. Today, more girls and boys are completing their education and or transitioning to the next grade or level, with a weighted completion rate of 79 percent and transition rate of 63 percent.

Teachers were not left behind as nearly 27,000 teachers—52 percent female—were trained and demonstrated increased knowledge, capacity, or performance in 2021.

To address the special needs of children and adolescents traumatized by war and conflict, over 13,800 learning spaces now have mental health and or psychosocial support activities. The number of teachers trained on mental health and psychosocial support topics doubled in 2021, reaching 54,000.

Ahead of its High-Level Financing Conference in Geneva in February 2023, the organization called on government donors, the private sector, foundations, and high-net-worth individuals to turn commitments into action by making substantive funding contributions to ECW.

The funding has already made a difference in Nigeria, where since January 2021, ECW partners facilitated 26,775 new school enrolments, an increase of 49.4 percent over the previous year.

In Cox’s Bazar, where 77 percent of children study at home, ECW partners supported the caregivers with bi-monthly visits and through radio broadcasting and the distribution of educational materials.

And in Syria, a consortium of partners was able to significantly improve conditions for children, with 74 percent of children showing an improvement in mathematics.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Excerpt:

"Today the poverty rate in Syria is an unprecedented 90 percent; 14.6 million people in Syria depend on humanitarian aid.” Credit: Zak Brophy/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Mar 22 2022 (IPS)

“Hundreds of thousands have been killed, more than half of the pre-war population – somewhere in the order of 22 million – have been displaced. More than 100,000 are missing or forcibly disappeared….

“Syria’s cities and infrastructure have been destroyed. Today the poverty rate in Syria is an unprecedented 90 percent; 14.6 million people in Syria depend on humanitarian aid.”

This is how one of the top UN-appointed human rights investigators on 9 March 2022 described the Syrian unfolding humanitarian catastrophe.

Presenting the latest UN Human Rights Council-mandated report on the 11-year-old conflict, Paulo Pinheiro, Chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, talked about the “devastating” impact on communities.

In Syria’s northwest, many Syrians forced from their homes “are still living in flimsy tents, stuck in snow, rain, mud,” Pinheiro added.

In the abyss

“Make no mistake that violence against civilians continues across the country, from bombardment in the northwest, north and northeast, to targeted killings, unlawful detention and torture…These are the abysses faced by the Syrian people.”

According to the report, covering the period July to December 2021, there were increased bombardments in the northwest of the country and skirmishes between the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) and the Syrian Democratic Forces in the northeast.

The Commission documented “grave violations of fundamental human rights and international humanitarian law by parties to the conflict, including war crimes and ongoing patterns of crimes against humanity.

“In Idlib and western Aleppo in the northwest, residential areas were also shelled indiscriminately from the ground by pro-government forces.”

140 percent inflation

Previous reports by the Commission of Inquiry have warned about a worsening humanitarian situation across Syria because of fighting and insecurity, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February has heightened concerns that critical wheat imports may now be affected, said Commissioner Hanny Megally: “We’re already seeing inflation at 140 per cent at the beginning of this year (and) it’s gone up.

“We’re seeing the State already beginning to ration. We’re seeing the prices of commodities, basic commodities and fuel going up…Most of Syria’s imported wheat is coming from Ukraine or Russia, so we are very concerned that the war in Ukraine will have a bad impact on Syria.”

Teetering on collapse

With Syria “teetering on collapse”, the Commissioner urged a review of sanctions imposed on Syria on a country-by-country basis.

“Sanctions …should facilitate humanitarian assistance (but) this is not really working very well,” said Megally, who warned that many countries were so fearful of breaching the embargoes that they were practising “overcompliance”, leaving Syrian communities short of essential commodities.

War in Syria, a carnage

Last year, marking its tenth year, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, classified the war in Syria as a “carnage.” This year, Guterres said that Syria’s 11 years of brutal fighting has come at an “unconscionable human cost”, subjecting millions there to human rights violations on a “massive and systematic scale.”

“The destruction that Syrians have endured is so extensive and deadly that it has few equals in modern history.”

Healthcare under attack

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that only half of the 550 health facilities in the region remain open nearly a decade after the war began.

“Syria represents one of the worst cases of healthcare being affected by conflict, according to the agency, with a total of 494 attacks recorded between 2016-2019, mainly in the northwest.”

During that same period, 470 people were killed in attacks on health facilities.

“What is troubling is that we‘ve come to a point where attacks on health – something the international community shouldn‘t tolerate – are now taken for granted; something we have become accustomed to. ”, said Richard Brennan, WHO Regional Emergency Director in the Eastern Mediterranean. “And they are still taking place”.

12 million Syrians into food insecurity

As the Syrian war has driven poverty and hunger to levels higher than at any previous point, UN Special Envoy Geir Pedersen told the Security Council on 25 February 2022.

“After 10 years of crisis, life is harder than ever for displaced Syrians. Millions of Syrians have been forced to flee their homes since 2011, seeking safety as refugees in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and beyond, or displaced inside Syria. As the crisis continues, hope is fading. With the devastating impact of the pandemic and increasing poverty, every day is an emergency for Syrians forced to flee.”

Largest refugee crisis in decades

According to the UN Refugee agency (UNHCR) already last year millions of Syrians have escaped across borders, in what has become “the world’s largest refugee crisis in decades.”

Turkey hosts the largest number of registered Syrian refugees – more than 3.6 million.

“The vast majority of Syrian refugees in the neighbouring countries live in urban areas, with only 1 out of 20 accommodated in a refugee camp. In all neighbouring countries, life is a daily struggle for more than a million Syrian refugees, who have little or no financial resources.” UNHCR added the following:

• Many lost employment since the COVID-19 pandemic has broken out. In Lebanon, nine out of ten refugees now live in extreme poverty,
• There are no formal refugee camps and, as a result, Syrians are scattered throughout urban and rural communities and locations, often sharing small basic lodgings with other refugee families in overcrowded conditions.
• In Jordan, over 660,000 men, women and children are currently trapped in exile. Approximately 80 percent of them live outside camps, while 128,000 have found sanctuary in refugee camps such as Za’atari and Azraq.
• Many have arrived with limited means to cover even basic needs, and those who could at first rely on savings or support from host families are now increasingly in need of help.
• In Jordan, about four out of five Syrian refugees (close to 80 percent ) were living under the national poverty line even before the pandemic, surviving on about US$3 a day.
• Iraq also is a main host country for Syrians, with some 244,000 registered refugees, while in Egypt UNHCR provides protection and assistance to more than 130,000.

The tragic frustration of the Arab Spring

“Today, March 15, marks the 11th anniversary of the start of the Syrian revolution. It was on this day in 2011 that Syrian government forces opened fire on peaceful pro-democracy protesters in the southern town of Daraa,” Human Rights Watch reminded.

“The violent crackdown sparked nationwide protests and growing demands for the resignation of Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad. As the unrest spread, the government crackdown intensified, eventually descending into civil war. It’s a war that has been largely forgotten, although it bears similar hallmarks to the horrors inflicted on Ukraine in Russia‘s renewed invasion,” the international human rights defender organisation added.

“Yet, while the US and Europe responded with unprecedented urgency to the crisis in Ukraine, waiving visa regulations for people fleeing the conflict and welcoming Ukrainian refugees with compassion and open arms, people fleeing other wars and crises like the one in Syria have been facing unlawful and violent pushbacks at borders.”

Nevertheless, Syrian activists and refugees have often been among the first to demonstrate solidarity with other people facing crisis, offering to volunteer in Ukraine, too, said Human Rights Watch.

“So, even though the world largely abandoned Syrians to face down attacks from multiple abusive armed actors, this day [15 March 2022] should be a reminder that Syrians’ experience of violent rights violations is the same as Ukrainians’, and they deserve the same continued protections and support too.”

Tragically, the hopes of the Arab Spring have been crushed. Authoritarian regimes still reign in the region. And massive local and foreign military attacks continue, with weapons pouring in Syria. Confusing reports circulate about the key actors–Russia, Turkey, Iran, the United States and Europa. All that has failed. Yet, the brutal killing of civilians goes on.

Security Council Members Hold Open Videoconference in Connection with Syria. Courtesy: United Nations/Loey Felipe

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 16 2020 (IPS)

Children in Syria are facing the brutal brunt of the ongoing civil war in the country, now rendered further paralysed owing to the COVID-19 pandemic and United States sanctions.

At the Sept. 15 launch of the report investigating human rights violations in Syria by the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, experts warned that in addition to the already ongoing conflict, “newer forms of violence” was on the rise.

“While well documented violence such as arbitrary detention, disappearances, torture, and deaths in custody continue to be utilised by these actors, newer forms of violence including targeted killings, looting, appropriation of property are increasing in numbers and carry sectarian undertones,” Paulo Pinheiro, chair of the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, said yesterday.

The report monitored human rights conditions in the war-torn country between Jan. 11 and Jul. 1, 2020. It paints a grave picture especially about the condition of children, in addition to other human rights crises in the country.

Children are both victims to being recruited by the Syrian National Army (SNA), as well as sexual abuse, which is used as a means to inflict torture on other men, the report found.

It documented at least two occasions when members of the SNA forced male detainees to witness the rape of a minor in an attempt to “humiliate, extract confessions and instil fear” within them.

“On the first day, the minor was threatened with being raped in front of the men, but the rape did not proceed,” read the report. “The following day, the same minor was gang-raped, as the male detainees were beaten and forced to watch in an act that amounts to torture.”

“Women and young girls are being targeted more and more, [with] reports of rape and detention have risen quite a bit,” Hanny Megally, a member of the commission.

The SNA is also recruiting children to deploy them in conflict outside of the country, the report found.

Meanwhile, children recruited by the Syrian Democratic Forces/Kurdish People’s Protection Units would end up in detention centres on accusations of espionage and/or for being affiliated with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. According to testimony from adult detainees, the children were held in the same cells as adults, and it’s not clear if they had been charged with anything.

Children are also suffering alongside the rest of the country from grave food insecurity, according to the report.

About 9.3 million are currently facing food insecurity in the country, exacerbated further by the pandemic as well as U.S. sanctions.

The United Nations Children’s Fund estimates about six million children have been born since the war began, whose only idea of life has been the conflict. 

Beyond these grave effects on children, other civilians remain at continuous threat of arbitrary detention, with risks of dying while in detention.

Megally said that the overall nature of attacks on civilians has also experienced change: there are now more assassinations, more people being kidnapped for extortions and ransom, and more people being attacked to silence their criticism. 

In a response to an inquiry by the media, Megally added that measures such as checkpoints, which are set up to restrict movements in order to contain the pandemic, were “often being used to detain and harass people who are trying to move for legitimate reasons.”

The report calls for leaders to immediately address issues of gender-based sexual violence, to have a “large-scale prisoner release”, and for all stakeholders — local and international — to “ensure and facilitate unfettered access for independent humanitarian, protection and human rights organisations in every part of the country, including to places of confinement or detention” in order to address the food insecurity concerns in the country.

Pinheiro further reiterated that in order to address this worsening crisis, it’s imperative that sectoral sanctions are waived to ensure that there’s movement of food and medical supplies, and that children and prisoners be released.

Syria’s government has arrested, detained and tortured large numbers of medics in a systematic effort to cut off treatment to swaths of the turbulent country’s population and swing the civil war in its favour, according to a new report. This photo dated 2015 shows supporters demanding an end to the bombing of hospitals in Syria at a die-in to defend Syrian health professionals. Credit: Michael Hnatov/Physicians for Human Rights

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 4 2019 (IPS)

Syria’s government has arrested, detained and tortured large numbers of medics in a systematic effort to cut off treatment to swaths of the turbulent country’s population and swing the civil war in its favour, according to a new report.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a campaign group, provided jaw-dropping testimony from 21 physicians, pharmacists, volunteers and other medical workers who had been detained by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

Researchers found that Assad’s forces have tracked down and arrested medical staff, subjected them to beatings and humiliation and interrogated them over whether they had treated wounded rebel fighters and civilians in opposition areas.

“The Syrian government has effectively criminalised the provision of nondiscriminatory care to all, regardless of political affiliation,” the report says.

It has also “systematically targeted health facilities and health workers as part of a wider strategy of war aimed at breaking civilian populations and forcing them into submission.”

Syria’s mission to the United Nations did not respond to requests for comment from IPS. Previously, Syrian ambassador Bashar Jaafari has denied claims that Damascus targets health workers, often accusing critics of seeking to delegitimise Assad’s government.

Between June and August this year, the New York-based research group interviewed 19 men and two women medical workers who had previously been detained by the Syrian government during the country’s chaotic, eight-year war.

Interviewees said they were detained for “real or perceived involvement” in treating injured “opposition members and sympathisers”. Interrogators tried to make the detained medics confess to treason, they said.

“Interviewees reported that Syrian security forces regularly beat, humiliated, and subjected them to stress positions,” the report said. 

“In some cases, they were burned, shocked with electricity, and sexually assaulted.”

Researchers describe questioners and torturers accusing detained doctors of “working in or establishing field hospitals, providing medical treatment and material support to terrorists, and other acts considered to be subversive”. 

The 48-page report, called “My Only Crime Was That I Was a Doctor”, highlights the case of a surgeon, known in the report as Dr. Youssef, who helped establish a network for treating injured protestors at the start of the Syrian uprising in early 2011. 

Seven plainclothes security officers arrested Youssef at a hospital in the Qalamoun area, north of Damascus, in August of that year, and took him to al-Nabek State Security Branch, where he was strip-searched and caged in a tiny cell.  

Youssef was tortured for some 1-3 hours daily, including electric shocks and beatings with concrete-filled pipes. Interrogators quizzed him about supporting “terrorists”, demanded that he name medical colleagues and forced him to sign confessions.

The physician was ultimately released in December 2011. For some months, he treated the injured in a field hospital in rebel-held Idlib province, in the country’s northwest, before crossing the border into Turkey in 2014.

Syria’s government, which is backed by Russian airpower and Iran-aligned militias, has repeatedly faced criticism for deliberately targeting doctors, clinics and ambulances as it claws back control over a fragmented country.

PHR has documented 583 attacks on Syrian health facilities since the conflict began. The group attributes 90 percent of these attacks on the government and its allies in what it calls a “purposeful assault on health”.

Last month, the New York Times daily reported on Russian air raids on Idlib over a 12-hour period, which found that the Russian air force repeatedly bombed hospitals in a bid to crush the last rebel-held stronghold.

Earlier this year, U.N. officials accused Russian forces of deliberately targeting hospitals and schools as a tactic to “terrorise” civilians — accusations denied by both Damascus and Moscow. 

In August, the U.N. established a board of inquiry to investigate the bombing of U.N.-supported medical facilities in the northwest of the country, which is due to release its findings in the coming weeks.

This week UN Security Council considered the situation in Syria. Aid groups operating in northeastern Syria have been raising the alarm about civilian casualties and an impending humanitarian crisis this week, as Turkey began a military assault on the turbulent region’s Kurdish militants. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 10 2019 (IPS)

Aid groups operating in northeastern Syria have been raising the alarm about civilian casualties and an impending humanitarian crisis this week, as Turkey began a military assault on the turbulent region’s Kurdish militants.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other groups warned about everything from massive new flows of refugees to conditions for detained Islamic State (IS) fighters from a previous phase in Syria’s chaotic civil war.

Turkish forces began an offensive in Syria’s northeast on Wednesday to clear out Kurdish militias and return Syrian refugees, within days of United States President Donald Trump’s controversial decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria’s turbulent north.

MSF teams “remain ready to provide medical care after the Turkish military launched operations” and “are preparing for a potential increase of patients linked to the conflict,” the group said in a statement Wednesday.

“We have seen people being displaced from locations along the border due to the conflict and are extremely worried that the military intervention will threaten the safety and wellbeing of the Syrian people,” the group said.

Military operations against Kurdish fighters began Wednesday with air strikes rocking the Syrian border town of Ras al Ain with large explosions, as Turkey moved tanks, artillery, and howitzers in preparation for a broader assault.

United Nations spokesman Farhan Haq said aid groups would have “scale-up at a time of crisis” and urged the region’s armed forces to keep the Turkey-Syria border open so that aid trucks could bring food, medicine and other gear to those affected by fighting.

Ankara seeks to create a “safe zone” to return millions of refugees to Syrian soil and end a “terror corridor” on Turkey’s southern border. Turkey says Kurdish YPG fighters in northeast Syria are terrorists due to their links to militants waging an insurgency inside Turkey.

Turkey had been preparing to advance into Syria’s northeast since U.S. troops started pulling out of the area in a policy shift by Trump that was widely condemned in Washington as a betrayal of America’s armed Kurdish allies.

Eric Schwartz, president of Refugees International, an aid group, blasted Trump’s policy shift and rounded on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “shockingly irresponsible” assault, which “will put lives at grave risk.”

“Trump’s decision to give Turkey the green light to launch an incursion into northeast Syria could have major humanitarian consequences,” Schwartz, a former U.S. State Department official, said in a statement.

“It could open new fronts in the conflict and newly displace hundreds of thousands of civilians across an area already in the grip of a humanitarian crisis [and] likely force international relief groups to evacuate just when they are most needed.”

Doz, a youth aid organisation, said Ankara’s stated objective of resettling some 2 million Syrian refugees from Turkey back to their homeland was tantamount to “demographic engineering and ethnic cleansing”.

In a statement, Doz urged the European Union, the U.N. and the U.S. to try to “prevent this war”, which will have “dramatic consequences such as new mass forced migration and directly affect the life of 6 million civilians.”

Fighting in the struggling northeast could “revive” prospects for IS and “cause the release” of some 12,000 hardline militants who are detained by Kurdish forces at al-Hol and other camps in Syria’s northeast, said Doz.

HRW, a New York-based campaign group, said the detained militants across some seven lockups in the northeast included 4,000 foreign fighters who should be repatriated to their countries of origin.

“Thousands of people, including children, are stuck in what amounts to shockingly overcrowded prisons on suspicion of being IS, but no one is accepting responsibility for them,” said Letta Tayler, a crisis researcher for HRW. 

“Any authority that effectively controls these informal prisons is legally bound to urgently improve conditions and ensure that each and every detainee is held lawfully.”

Children rest beneath a tree in a makeshift camp in Aqrabat village, near the Turkish border, after fleeing hostilities in Idlib. (June 2019). Credit: © UNICEF/Aaref Watad.

By External Source
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 1 2019 (IPS)

There is a “sign of hope for the long-suffering Syrian people” as a Syrian-led, Syrian-owned, credible and inclusive Constitutional Committee is set to start deliberations next month, the United Nations Special Envoy for the country told the Security Council on Monday.

As the “first concrete political agreement” between the Government and opposition groups, it “implies a clear acceptance of the other as an interlocutor”, said Geir O. Pedersen. “It commits their nominees to sit together in face-to-face dialogue and negotiation, while at the same time opening the space for civil society at the table”.

After years of intense negotiation, Secretary-General António Guterres announced last Monday that the Syrian Government and the Syrian Negotiations Commission had agreed to form “a credible, balanced and inclusive Constitutional Committee that will be facilitated by the UN in Geneva”.

“Step by step we need to build the kind of safe, calm and neutral environment that could make Syrians feel that the political process can restore their country and respond to their aspirations”
Geir O. Pedersen, United Nations Special Envoy for Syria


It offers “a new social contract to help repair a broken country”, he flagged, saying it “can be a door opener to a wider political process” and, if accompanied by other steps to build trust and confidence among Syrians and the international community, “a step along the difficult path out of this conflict”.

Nuts and bolts

The agreement’s core terms of reference are framed by the key principles of respect for the UN Charter, Security Council resolutions, Syria’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.

The UN envoy spelled out that the constitutional reforms adopted by the Committee “must be popularly approved and transposed into the national legal order by a means that will need to be agreed”.

He outlined the Committee’s structure, which will consist of “equal co-chairs” one from the Government, the other from the opposition; a 45-person body consisting of 15 Government, 15 opposition and 15 civil society members to prepare and draft proposals; and a 150-person body from the same sectors, each with 50 members, to discuss and adopt proposals – with a 75 per cent decision-making threshold.

Noting that the UN will release the names of the 150 members after they have been confirmed, he pointed out that the 50 civil society actors hail from different religious, ethnic and geographical backgrounds; some live inside Syria while others are based outside; and nearly half are women.

“Both parties have told me that they have confidence in the United Nations and want to work with us in a sustained and constructive manner”, said Mr. Pedersen, adding: “We will do everything we can to meet their expectations”.

“Ensuring sufficient credibility, balance and inclusivity…has been a key priority”, the UN envoy said, admitting that “the result is a negotiated compromise, and like all compromises, no one is completely satisfied”.

Lauding the “outstanding work” of “Syrian experts and activists, men and women, on all sides” that have helped create this new public space for democratic and civic debates, he acknowledged that not all of them could be on the Committee, but expressed confidence that “they will continue to make their voices heard”.

“The future constitution of Syria belongs to the Syrian people and them alone”, he stressed.

“Syrians, not outsiders, will draft the constitution, and the Syrian people must popularly approve it”, maintained Mr. Pedersen.

Pointing to the continuing humanitarian crisis in Idlib; ongoing terrorism concerns; violence – and the plight of displaced, abducted and missing civilians – the Special Envoy recognized that many challenges persist, and appealed to all parties to “seize upon the momentum that the Committee offers and take concrete actions, to build trust and confidence”.

“Step by step”, Mr. Pederson told Council members, “we need to build the kind of safe, calm and neutral environment that could make Syrians feel that the political process can restore their country and respond to their aspirations”.

This story was originally published by UN News

The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) said two medical workers were killed in an attack Wednesday at an ambulance centre in Ma’aret Hurmeh, a town in Idlib province. Courtesy: Syrian American Medical Society

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 16 2019 (IPS)

Medical aid groups have again blasted Russian and Syrian government forces this week for an ever-growing death toll among doctors, paramedics and other health workers in military strikes in northwestern Syria.

The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) said two medical workers were killed in an attack Wednesday at an ambulance centre in Ma’aret Hurmeh, a town in Idlib province, which has been gripped by fighting in recent weeks.

Paramedic Mohamad Hussni Mishnen, 29, and ambulance driver Fadi Alomar, 34, died in a series of six airstrikes that levelled the facility, SAMS said. A rescuer also perished in a “double tap” hit on the centre as he tried to pull Mishnen and Alomar from the rubble.

Several aid groups and the United Nations have warned of repeated strikes on Idlib’s hospitals as Syrian government forces, backed by Russian airpower, retake the last rebel bastion in the country’s eight-year civil war. 

Mufaddal Hamadeh, president of SAMS, said in a statement he was “saddened and disturbed by this terrible incident”. He paid tribute to the medics and said those responsible for such “blatant crimes” should be held accountable.

Another group, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), has received reports of 46 attacks on  health centres since Syrian government and Russian forces launched an offensive on Idlib on April 29. The group has verified 16 of them.

“PHR’s rigorous research since the conflict began reveals that Syrian government and/or Russian government forces have committed approximately 91 percent of the attacks on health facilities in Syria,” said the group’s policy director Susannah Sirkin.

“The fact that these courageous professionals in Idlib were killed while merely doing their jobs should compel the U.N. and all parties to act now to stop the relentless bombing of civilians.”

Last month, after two-thirds of U.N. Security Council diplomats issued a protest note, U.N. secretary-general António Guterres launched an inquiry into attacks on civilian infrastructure including hospitals, clinics and schools.

The so-called Board of Inquiry will probe whether GPS coordinates of hospitals and clinics that the U.N. provides to Russia, the U.S. and Turkey to ensure the hospitals’ protection were used instead to target them.

Guterres “must conduct a rapid, public, and transparent investigation into attacks on health in the face of the deconfliction agreements”, while Security Council members “must ensure that those responsible for these unthinkable crimes are held accountable,” added Sirkin.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government and Moscow, whose airpower has been critical to Damascus’ military gains in recent years, say they are fighting terrorists and deny targeting civilians, schools or hospitals, which can constitute war crimes.

Replying to a question from IPS, Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s envoy to the U.N., said he was “disappointed” by the U.N.’s decision to launch the probe but did not commit to cooperating with investigators.

“If we were sure that this board will really try to establish the truth, then I can’t exclude this,” Polyanskiy told reporters.

“But there are a lot of doubts about this. These countries that were pushing for the establishment of this board … are not seeking to find the truth about what’s happened, they seek another tool to pressure Russia, to pressure Syria, and to just distort the actions that we take there.”

Syria’s U.N. ambassador Bashar Ja’afari has said that northwest Syria’s healthcare centres were used by “terrorist groups” rather than doctors.

According to the U.N., more than 450 people have been killed in the Idlib offensive and hundreds of thousands more displaced by fighting. Idlib’s population is about three million, most of whom have fled from other parts of war-torn Syria.

Idlib and nearby parts of the northwest were covered by a “de-escalation” deal to staunch the conflict that was struck in September by Russia and Turkey, which backs some rebel groups in the area. 

But the deal was never fully implemented after fighters refused to withdraw from a planned buffer zone. Fighting has ratcheted up again in recent weeks, sending waves of refugees spilling from conflict hotspots.

President Assad is seeking to claw back control of Syria after peaceful protests in 2011 spiralled into a brutal civil war that saw him lose much of the country to armed religious extremists and other rebels.

More than 400,000 people have died across Syria since 2011, according to World Bank figures, and almost 12 million others have been forced to flee from their homes because of the fighting, both within Syria and abroad.

United Nations staff hold signs with photos of children stating they are not targets. The U.N. has struck a deal with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to stop using child soldiers and to release all youngsters from their ranks. Courtesy: UN Women/Ryan Brown

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 2019 (IPS)

The United States-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have struck a deal with the United Nations to stop using child soldiers across swathes of eastern Syria under their control and to release all youngsters from their ranks, the U.N. announced Monday.

General Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the SDF, an alliance of armed groups that includes the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG), signed an accord over the weekend to halt recruitment of children under 18 years and to punish any officers who break the new rules.

The YPG has been identified as a recruiter of child soldiers in the U.N.’s annual “list of shame” since 2014. In its most recent annual study, the world body confirmed 224 cases of minors being recruited by the group in 2017.

“It is an important day for the protection of children in Syria and it marks the beginning of a process as it demonstrates a significant commitment by the SDF to ensure that no child is recruited and used by any entity operating under its umbrella,” said the U.N. Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Virginia Gamba.

The deal was the result of months of talks between the U.N. and the SDF, which must now identify any boys and girls among its force and send them back to their families. The group must also discipline officers who break the new rules.

Conditions for children in Syria are among the “direst” on her agenda, Gamba said. In 2017, she confirmed at least 6,000 violations had been committed against youngsters by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Worse still, the patchwork of rebels, terrorists and other armed militias fighting in Syria’s chaotic civil war committed more than 15,000 violations against children — ranging from recruitment to rapes, killings, maimings and the bombing of schools.

In addition to the YPG, the U.N. has named and shamed Syrian government forces, the rebel Free Syrian Army, the Islamic State (IS), the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham group, Jaish al-Islam and Tahrir al-Sham, the latest iteration of al-Qaeda’s former affiliate the al-Nusra Front.

After releasing all child soldiers and fulfilling the terms of its deal with the U.N. — known as an “action plan” — an armed group can be removed from the U.N.’s list of shame, as has happened with militias in Congo, Chad and Ivory Coast in recent years.

“Action plans represent an opportunity for parties to change their attitude and behaviour so that grave violations against children stop and are prevented to durably improve the protection of children affected by armed conflict,” Gamba said.

The SDF controls the quarter of Syria east of the Euphrates river after driving back IS in a series of advances from 2015 that culminated in March with the group’s defeat at its last holdout in Baghouz, near the Iraqi border.

Washington’s support for the SDF has been problematic, as Turkey views the Kurdish-led force as a branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a domestic independence group that Ankara sees as a terrorist organisation.

Children are among the victims of a recent spike in fighting in Syria’s Idlib Province, the last remaining bastion for anti-government rebels and where a shaky truce brokered by Russia and Turkey appears to be falling apart.

Thousands of pregnant women, vulnerable infants and young children are among the estimated 330,000 people fleeing conflict in the northwestern area, the Christian aid group World Vision said in a statement Monday. 

“It’s hard to imagine the trauma, distress and physical toll that the flight from air strikes and bombs has on families in Idlib. And it’s even worse for pregnant women and those with babies and young children,” said Mays Nawayseh, a World Vision aid worker.

The war in Syria, now in its 9th year, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions since it started with the violent repression of anti-government protests in March 2011.

Journalists in Peshawar protest an attack on Dawn News near the Peshawar Press Club in November 2016. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Sopho Kharazi
ROME, Apr 22 2018 (IPS)

The 25^th celebration of World Press Freedom Day will be led by UNESCO and the government of Ghana in Accra on May 2-3. The theme is “Keeping Power in Check: Media, Justice and The Rule of Law,” covering the issues of media in respect to the judicial system and transparent political processes.

At the same time, the conference will discuss state institutions’ accountability towards their citizens.

The day takes place in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015, which includes 17 goals for achieving sustainable development for all, including ending inequalities between men and women. Among the goals, Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 focuses on promoting just, peaceful and inclusive societies.

Peace, justice and strong institutions allow for good governance as well as other sustainable development efforts to thrive, facilitated further by an independent and enabling media environment.

Today, the number of countries with right to information laws is steadily increasing. The international normative framework regarding the safety of journalists, and particularly women journalists, has been significantly bolstered through the adoption of resolutions at the UN General Assembly, Security Council, Human Rights Council and UNESCO, and there is greater recognition of the right to privacy.

Still, according to Freedom House, a free press is accessible to only 13% of the world population and a partly free press to 42% of the world population. The remaining 45% lives in countries where a free press is non-existent (“New Report: Freedom of the Press 2017”). Political and economic transformations of some countries alongside their technological developments place new restrictions on press freedom.

Governments of these countries tend to implement restrictive laws and censorship on freedom of press, usually justifying these actions as a necessary tool for national security against terrorism. Apart from violating the right of freedom of expression, these restrictions place higher risks of violence, harassment and death on journalists.

According to the 2017 World Press Freedom Index, violence and restrictions against media freedom has risen by 14% in the time period of 2012-2017. At the same time, since 2016, media freedom in countries where it was ranked as “good” decreased by 2.3%.

The level of restriction on press freedom has been one of the highest in MENA countries such as Syria. Even though article 43 of Syria’s Constitution guarantees freedom of the press while a 2011 media law bans monopolistic media alongside with “the arrest, questioning, or searching of journalists,” these laws are not practiced in the government-held areas of the country. According to the media law, publication of any information on armed forces and spread of information that might affect national security and provoke “hate crimes” is forbidden in Syria. In case of violating this law, journalists are held accountable and fined with 1 million Syrian pounds ($4,600).

At the same time, despite the fact that article 3 of the media law guarantees freedom of expression as stated in the Syrian Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 4 of the same law declares that the media must practice this freedom with “awareness and responsibility”.

Consequently, this broad wording allows the Syrian government to restrict press freedom in multiple ways and in case of disobedience, punish journalists for anti-state crimes. For instance, in December 2016, the government imprisoned seven Syrian journalists through security-related legislation and used torture to receive their confession.

From the political perspective, Syrian authorities spread propaganda and false information while forcefully restricting publication of news in the government-controlled areas. Distribution of “all printed material” has been led by the General Corporation for the Distribution of Publications, responsible for censorship in Syria. This, alongside the economic problems caused by war, has decreased media diversity in the government-controlled area, leaving only a few dozen print publications which rarely deal with the political issues.

From the economic perspective, most of the print publications are owned by the government-allied businessmen who also control editorial policy. This, on the other hand, intensifies the problem of the non-existent free press in Syria.

However, despite this fact, in the opposition-controlled territory new print and broadcast outlets have emerged, funded by volunteers and some of them based abroad. For instance, the opposition TV channel – Orient TV owned by Ghassan Aboud, an exiled Syrian entrepreneur – broadcasts from Dubai while having correspondents in Syria.

According to Michael J. Abramowitz, president of Freedom House, “when politicians lambaste the media, it encourages their counterparts abroad to do the same…[undermining] democracy’s status as a model of press freedom.”

The case of Syria demonstrates how the absence of press freedom and an independent judiciary triggers development of authoritarian governments. The “just, effective and independent judiciary” is a base for an effective rule of law which builds a strong democratic system, guaranteeing the right of freedom of information, expression and safety of journalists.

This, on the other hand, provides free press that is compulsory for representing political will and needs of people, and for establishing good governance. Press freedom allows journalists to monitor and report about the on-going events taking place in different sectors of the state. As a result, this makes it possible to hold governments accountable towards their people and helps to accomplish the 2030 agenda of Sustainable Development Goals.

Syrian refugee children learn to survive at a camp in north Lebanon. Credit: Zak Brophy/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 2 2017 (IPS)

The UN has made its largest appeal to work towards reaching the more than 135 million people across the world in need of humanitarian assistance and protection.

Upon comprehensively assessing world humanitarian needs, the UN found that the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance has increased by more than 5 percent.

As a result, the institution has launched its strategic humanitarian response plans which aim to reach 91 million of the most vulnerable with food, shelter, health care, and education in 2018.

The ambitious plan will require a record 22.5 billion dollars, slightly higher than the 22.2 billion appeal made in 2017.

“Investing in coordinated response plans is a sound choice. It delivers tangible and measurable results, and has a proven track record of success,” said Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock.

In 2017, donors provided a record level of funding of 13 billion dollars to help humanitarian agencies reach and save tens of millions of people, including those who experienced unprecedented famines in four different countries.

However, 46 percent of the 22.2-billion-dollar appeal remains unfunded.

“Humanitarians can only respond to the growing needs with the generous support of our donors,” said Lowcock during a press conference.

CEO of Save the Children Helle Thorning-Schmidt echoed similar sentiments, noting the need for NGOs to use funding more effectively, as well as donor governments to invest in long-term development.

“[We] need governments and institutions to take a longer term approach by tackling the cause of these crises as well as the symptoms. By brokering peace agreements, investing in education, helping communities build resilience to climate shocks, and speaking up when people are persecuted. Without this, we will continue to see a record level of suffering,” she said.

“There are very few humanitarian crises that can be solved by humanitarian interventions alone,” Lowcock reiterated.

The crisis in Yemen continues to be the most urgent and will require a scaled up response in 2018.

Over 22 million Yemenis, representing over 70 percent of the population, require humanitarian assistance. This includes the 7 million who are on the brink of famine, which has only exacerbated since the Saudi-led coalition imposed a blockade.

Though the blockade has been partially lifted, Lowcock urged for a complete reversal in order to avoid an even bigger catastrophe.

Humanitarian needs will also continue to be high in Syria in 2018 unless a political solution is reached.

As hostilities are ongoing, access to those with the most need still remains constrained, particularly to the over 900,000 in UN-declared besieged areas and almost 3 million living in hard-to-reach areas.

The proportion of the population living in extreme poverty in the Middle Eastern nation has doubled from almost 34 percent before the conflict to almost 70 percent today. Limited access to income and livelihood opportunities has doubled the number of people at risk of food insecurity.

Lowcock pointed to the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo as among the most neglected, with only 40 percent of its appeal funded.

The increase in violence, which is expected to worsen, forced almost 2 million people to flee their homes in 2017, bringing to the total number of internally displaced persons to over 4 million—the highest number of any country on the African continent.

As the majority of the world’s humanitarian crises are driven by conflict, Thorning-Schmidt urged for action to help protect the most vulnerable, including children.

“If we don’t do anything extraordinary, we will end up stealing these children’s futures twice,” she said. “We have to put even more pressure on the global community and on warring parties to make peace.”

A civil defence team search for survivors after a barrel bomb attack in Aleppo Syria in August 2014. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Farhang Jahanpour
OXFORD, Jul 3 2017 (IPS)

Although US policies during the past few months have been quite puzzling and unpredictable, the events of the past few days have been truly bewildering and alarming. On Monday 26th June, the White House released a statement saying that the United States had “identified potential preparations for another chemical attack by the Assad regime…” It went on to say: “If, however, Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.”

The threats were not limited to the Syrian government. Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, followed that statement by tweeting: “Any further attacks done to the people of Syria will be blamed on Assad, but also on Russia & Iran who support him killing his own people.”

It is of course beside the point to ask how US officials have “identified” that Syria was preparing for another chemical attack, while after so many years of fighting ISIS and other terrorists, they have not yet been able to find out who is supplying them with weapons, funds and organization.

Farhang Jahanpour

With these strange and unsubstantiated statements, the Trump Administration is introducing a new element of uncertainty to the developments in the Middle East. As if the situation in that volatile region was not bad enough, these warlike statements have made it much worse. Many people are asking whether the US Administration is preparing the ground for a major confrontation in the Middle East with unimaginable consequences.

Some 14 years ago, in total violation of international law, former US President George W. Bush launched a barbaric attack on Iraq on the basis of fabricated intelligence, which destroyed that country, killed and wounded more than a million people, and gave rise to ISIS that has afflicted the world ever since.

Far from having learned any lessons from that disastrous mistake, the Trump Administration seems intent on committing a similar mistake on a grander scale. During the campaign, Candidate Trump accused the former US Administration of having created ISIS, not indirectly but deliberately. He spoke about America having spent six trillion dollars on illegal wars in the Middle East and having nothing to show for it. He vowed that he would not be interested in regime change and was intent on resolving international disputes through negotiations and deals.

Whether he has changed his mind or whether the neocons in the Administration have infiltrated and dominated his administration makes little difference. The clear fact is that the Trump Administration seems to have opted for the logic of war, instead of resolving the conflicts by peaceful means.

During the past few weeks, US forces have launched a number of attacks on the positions of the forces allied with the Syrian government. On 18th May and 6th June, American aircraft bombed pro-Syrian militias in southern Syria. They shot down two Iranian-made drones on 8th and 20 June, and on 18th June a US fighter shot down a Syrian aircraft that was attacking ISIS bases west of Raqqa.

On 6th April, after an alleged Syrian chemical attack on Khan Shaykhun, a US frigate fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at the air base from which the Syrian aircraft had taken off. This was despite the fact that the United Nations was still investigating the source of the attack, and some leading investigative reporters and even the Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity who were on the ground had cast doubt on the Syria government’s involvement in the chemical attack.

It is strange that as Syrian forces, backed by Russia and Iran, are gaining the upper hand and liberating most of Syria from the terrorists, the intensity of Israeli and American attacks on Syrian government forces has increased.

From the start of the crisis in Syria, there have been a number of theories based on some leaked information that claimed that the entire debacle in Syria was part of a vicious plot by Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States, initially supported by Turkey and Qatar, to isolate Iran and to cut off any links between Iran and Hezbollah through Syria.

Whether those theories about US involvement in Syria in support of Israel and against Iran were correct or not, the fact remains that the Trump Administration is engaged in an illegal and dangerous course of action that may result in a an unwanted war between Russia and Iran on the one hand, and the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia on the other.

In view of these developments it is important to point out:

1. US actions are in clear violation of the UN Charter and are acts of aggression against a sovereign state.
2. While Russian and Iranian forces are fighting in Syria against the insurgents at the invitation of the Syrian government, America as an uninvited guest has been fighting against the Syrian forces.
3. If the Trump Administration is sincere in wanting to eliminate ISIS it should support Russia and Iran to liberate the remaining territory occupied by the terrorists.
4. If the Trump Administration believes in democracy, free elections and the rule of law, it should call for elections in Syria under UN supervision after the defeat of the insurgents, and then accept the election results, rather than keep calling for the ouster of the Syrian president.
5. Before launching into a dangerous adventure against Russia and Iran, the Trump Administration must carefully consider the consequences of such a major confrontation.
6. If the Trump Administration is determined to push for war in Syria, US allies should make it clear that they will not support another unnecessary war in the Middle East.
7. Meanwhile, instead of being only concerned about possible threats to the state of Israel, it is time to take serious steps to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict with some justice for the hard-pressed Palestinians who have lived under a brutal occupation for more than 50 years. Finding a fair solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict would ensure Israel’s security more than any attempts at regime change in other countries.
8. During the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump strongly criticized President Obama for having set a red line regarding the use of chemical weapons in Syria, and then failing to punish Syria. President Trump should realize that by issuing similar ultimatums to the Syrian government on the hypothetical use of chemical weapons, he is giving an open invitation to the terrorists to undertake such false flag operations, and then he will have to act, whether the Syrian government had been responsible for the use of chemical weapons or not.

Finally, to add an element of farce to the entire episode, on June 28th Defense Secretary James Mattis announced that the Syrian government had heeded the US warning and had changed its mind about the use of chemical weapons.

The situation in the world is too serious for the leading superpower in the world to pursue such confused and contradictory policies. It is time for the US government to adopt serious and sane approaches towards the Middle East before the world is engulfed in another major catastrophe.

Farhang Jahanpour is a former professor and dean of the Faculty of Languages at the University of Isfahan and a former Senior Research Scholar at Harvard. For the past 30 years he has been teaching courses on the Middle East at the Department of Continuing Education and is a member of Kellogg College at the University of Oxford

The statements and views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of IPS.

Nikki Haley, U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN holding up pictures of victims of the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria which prompted the Trump administration to launch an airstrike against the Assad government. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 7 2017 (IPS)

U.S. President Donald Trump Thursday night described the deepening Syrian refugee crisis as partial justification for the first direct U.S. airstrike against the Syrian government, even though the United States still bans all refugees from Syria.

Several rights groups responded Friday, calling on Trump to repeal the ban, which applies to migrants from Syria and 5 other countries in Africa and the Middle East.

“Trump was using very strong words last night to describe the cruelty and the horrors that children and civilians in general are enduring (in Syria),” Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno, co-director of the US Program at Human Rights Watch told IPS.

“To try to keep refugees out of the United States is cruel,”McFarland Sánchez-Moreno added. “It’s contrary to the values that the U.S. has traditionally claimed to hold dear and inconsistent with some of the words that President Trump himself used last night.”

Speaking from Palm Beach, Florida on Thursday night Trump described how “even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered” in the alleged chemical weapons attack which took place earlier this week.

“Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behavior have all failed, and failed very dramatically.  As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize…” Trump continued.

However despite the airstrike marking a change in direction in Syria for the Trump Republican administration, there is no indication the administration is considering a similar shift in its policy towards Syrian refugees.

Reactions from the 15 member states of the UN Security Council to the airstrike on Friday were mixed, with some supporting the strikes even though the United States carried out the unilateral attack without the backing of the council. Others, including Bolivia, which called the meeting, strongly opposed the attack.

Lord Steward Wood of Anfield, Chair of the UN Association of the UK, a civil society organisation questioned the United States decision to take “unilateral action without broad international backing through the UN,”

He said that such action “without a clear strategy for safeguarding civilians, and through further military escalation risks further deepening and exacerbating an already protracted and horrific conflict, leaving civilians at greater, not lesser, risk of further atrocities.”

“In the meantime, if President Trump wishes to help the victims of Assad’s atrocities, he could pledge to play a leading role in resettling the survivors,” Wood added.

Meanwhile Noah Gottschalk, Oxfam America’s Senior Humanitarian Policy Advisor called for the United States to “change course” on Syrian refugees following the airstrikes.

Gottschalk said that the “innocent families” that Trump referred to “who were killed in Idlib are no different than the people who are attempting to seek refuge in the U.S.”

“Oxfam is urging the President to change course on his discriminatory ban that blocks Syrian civilians from finding refuge in the United States,” he said. “If we truly want to help protect the people of Syria, we must also be willing to offer the Syrians assistance as they flee attacks in search of safety.”

Although this is the first time that the United States has directly targeted Bashar Al-Assad’s government, airstrike monitoring project Airwars reports that there have been 7912 US-led coalition strikes targeting the so-called Islamic State since 2014. Airwars has also reported a spike in civilian casualties related to coalition air strikes in March 2017, rating 477 civilian casualties reports as ‘fair’.

However Airwars also reported that the U.S. strike on Shayrat Airfield in Homs in the early hours of Friday 7 April destroyed “up to 12 aircraft” describing this result as “significant” considering that “the primary cause of civilian deaths by (the) Syrian regime remains airstrikes.”

Earlier this week spokesmen for the UN Secretary-General Stéphane Dujarric said that the Secretary-General was “deeply disturbed by the reports of alleged use of chemical weapons in an airstrike in the Khan Shaykhun area of southern Idlib, Syria.”

“The Secretary-General expresses his heartfelt condolences to victims of the incident and their families.”

Guterres had not yet commented on the U.S. airstrike against the Syrian government as of Friday evening.

Almost five million people have fled Syria since the conflict began over six years ago. Many areas of Syria are besieged and inaccessible to humanitarian assistance as well as UN monitors. This makes it difficult for the UN to monitor attacks such as the alleged chemical weapons attack which took place this week. This is also why the UN no longer provides an official death toll for the conflict, however in April 2016, UN Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura said that it is likely more than 400,000 people had been killed.

Fadi Hallisso is co-founder of Syrian NGO Basmeh and Zeitooneh. Credit: L Rowlands/IPS.

By Lyndal Rowlands
NEW YORK, Feb 10 2017 (IPS)

Just 0.2 percent of humanitarian funding goes directly to local and national NGOs, according to a major UN review of humanitarian financing published ahead of the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit.

Yet nearly one year after the summit, little has changed. International donors continue to overlook organisations with local roots and local knowledge, despite their often much lower operating costs.

The High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing Report to the UN Secretary-General argued that responses to crises needed to be put back in the hands of the people most affected.

The panel’s members said that when they spoke to local and national organisations they heard a common complaint; that international organisations were “treated as sub-contractors rather than true partners.”

To find out what it’s like for local organisations working in humanitarian settings, IPS spoke with Fadi Hallisso, a co-founder of Basmeh and Zeitooneh, a Syrian organisation that supports Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Turkey.

Hallisso described how some of Basmeh and Zeitooneh’s programs have achieved success despite skepticism from big international donors.

One such case, says Halliso, was a workshop Basmeh and Zeitooneh started in Beirut where refugees embroider shoes and make other handcrafts:

“We approached different international organisations and all of them were saying this is not feasible. We’ve done the market study. There is no market for these things,” said Hallisso.

So Basmeh and Zeitooneh went to local businessmen and asked them to donate the funds to start the project instead.

With these funds the workshop became successful, the products the refugees make are now exported to the United States and Europe. Only once the project was successful, says Halliso were international donors suddenly interested.

However despite this lack of initial support from international donors Halliso says he has also witnessed international programs struggling to gain traction with locals.

In one case, an international NGO that set up recreation centres didn’t know why people weren’t using the centres. “They asked for our help to recruit people and find them children to come,” said Halliso.

“They were coming from Syria with only the clothes they had. They had far much more basic needs than just these spaces and they didn’t know the world of NGOs, they didn’t know who these people are and didn’t trust them, so why send their kids?”

He said that this example showed the importance of showing people solidarity by showing that you “understand their needs and are responding to them”.

While not all local organisations have achieved success, Basmeh and Zeitooneh has now grown to have over 500 employees says Halliso.

“I never imagined even in the best-case scenario that we would become an organization with 500 employees in several countries, so we were just doing what we felt it is our duty to do, to help our people, our citizens, to show them humanity, and this proved to be the right response because we understood what they needed.”

Yet although Basmeh and Zeitooneh has grown it still encounters challenges when dealing with international donors.

These include long delays waiting for needs assessments to be carried out and a lack of interest in funding smaller projects.

As Halliso explains, while donors may worry that local organisations don’t “have the financial systems in place, don’t have the policies and procedures that prevent corruption and stealing of money,” it is also difficult for local organisations to find support to develop these systems.

“We had trainings on how to write proposals, but writing proposals is not everything. We needed support to buy accounting software. No one from our donors was willing to give us the money, the cash money needed to buy this software.”

Yet, it is not just major international donors who are unsure how to fund local organisations. Individual donors are also unsure how to support local organisations directly from overseas..

“I often meet with people who ask me, ‘I want to help, but I don’t know how and I don’t know where to give my money to because I’m afraid that this will go to the wrong hands or to terrorist groups.’”

One way to address this gap, says Halliso is through the media.

“I think our problem is the media in general around Syria is too much taken about covering the military action, about speaking about terrorism and ISIS. Very little we see stories about the successful examples of Syrians who are trying to help and trying to do something good on the ground,” he said.

Halliso was in New York for meetings organised by the international organisation Oxfam, which has partnered with Basmeh and Zeitooneh, prior to the travel ban imposed on Syrians travelling to the United States.

Outgoing African Union Chair described the Muslim ban as a test for unity and solidarity. UN Photo/Rick Bajornas.

By Lyndal Rowlands
NEW YORK / UNITED NATIONS, Feb 1 2017 (IPS)

Outgoing African Union Chair Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma has described the United States ban on refugees and immigrants from seven countries as “one of the greatest challenges and tests to our unity and solidarity.”

Speaking to African leaders on Monday Zuma asked why “the very country to whom our people were taken as slaves during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, have now decided to ban refugees from some of our countries.”

On Friday 27 January United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily ceasing entry to the United States for nationals of seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The order also suspended the entire U.S. refugee program for 120 days and indefinitely blocked all refugees from Syria from entering the United States.

African leaders are not the only ones who see the ban as a test of unity and solidarity.

Others see growing anti-Muslim sentiment as a rallying point for solidarity between different religious groups, with American Jews questioning the “terrible irony” of the bill being signed on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

IPS spoke with Fadi Hallisso, a former Jesuit from Syria and Said Sabir Ibrahimi, who was born in Afghanistan and is involved in interfaith solidarity events between Jewish and Muslim people living in New York.

Hallisso, is the co-founder of Basmeh and Zeitooneh a Syrian NGO, whose five founders include three Christians.

“Our work in Turkey and Lebanon is almost 100 percent with Muslim Syrians,” Hallisso told IPS. “I think working hand-in-hand with different people from different religious backgrounds is what we need right now.”

“Religion is a powerful tool, but instead of using it for destruction and hatred, we are going to use it to build bridges between different communities to pave the way towards a better community for our kids,” he said.

Trump’s order also states that once the U.S. refugee program resumes it will prioritise claims from religious minorities – prompting some to believe that Christian refugees from these Muslim majority countries will be prioritised.

However Hallisso, himself a Syrian Christian, disagreed that in the case of Syria Christians are more persecuted than Muslims.

“We are all human beings suffering from an impossible situation that we wish to have an end to soon,” he said.

Hallisso described the women’s marches that occurred the day after Trump’s inauguration as an important act of solidarity.

“I wish we can in the coming few months and years to expand this solidarity to become global solidarity movement,” he said. “If the people of goodwill do not work together and the bad guys would have the last say.”

Said Sabir Ibrahimi, who was born in Afghanistan and now lives in New York told IPS that he has seen a growing movement of people of different background in the United States bridging divides.

Ibrahimi is part of a group which organises interfaith solidarity events between Jewish and Muslim people living in New York.

“We sense open Islamaphobia and subtle anti-semitism – not to mention the anti-women rhetoric and more,” Ibrahimi told IPS.

“The good news is that some Muslim-Jewish and other faith or non-faith groups have come together to voice their concerns about this whole chaotic policy shift and we have witnessed these groups showing up in protests in large crowds, across the country, in unprecedented ways probably since the 1960s during the Vietnam war.”

Meanwhile, the White House has also been criticised for failing to mention Jewish people in its statement issued on Holocaust Memorial Day.

“I think it’s so bizarre to talk about the Holocaust and not mention Jewish people,” said Ibrahimi. “It was the Jewish people who had suffered the most during those horrific times of World War Two.”

He said that people are drawing connections and associating significance with the marginalisation of minorities in Nazi Germany and the events unfolding in the United States.

For some American Jews, it was no coincidence that the dramatic change in US immigration policy was announced on Holocaust Remembrance Day:

Jeremy Ben-Ami, President of Liberal Jewish advocacy group J Street said that it was a “terrible irony” that Trump signed the order on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“The fact that President Trump’s order appears designed to specifically limit the entry of Muslims evokes horrible memories among American Jews of the shameful period leading up to World War Two, when the United States failed to provide a safe haven for the vast majority of Jews in Europe trying to escape Nazi persecution,” said Ben-Ami.

Meanwhile, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that she was ready to register as a Muslim in response to Trump’s proposed Muslim Registry – which as yet has not been enacted:

“I was raised Catholic, became Episcopalian & found out later my family was Jewish. I stand ready to register as Muslim in #solidarity,” said Albright who came to the United States from Czechoslovakia as a refugee.

Hallisso expressed dismay that the United States a country “built on immigration,” and “built by immigrants escaping religious persecution in Europe” has begun “portraying all immigrants and refugees as potential terrorists.”

“To see this coming from Americans now, some American leaders, is for me devastating because it is like someone ignoring all of the history of his own country,” he said.

“But also it is problematic for us in the Middle East for a number of reasons, because for God’s sake, how do you expect countries like Lebanon and Jordan and Turkey to continue to receive more than a million refugees if 10,000 Syrian refugees coming to the United States are a problem?”

The UN Security Council has agreed to send UN monitors to Aleppo. Credit: UN Photo/Amanda Voisard

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 19 2016 (IPS)

The UN Security Council – which has long struggled to find common ground on Syria – has unanimously approved a resolution allowing the UN to monitor the evacuation of civilians from Aleppo.

Proposed by France, the resolution calls for the immediate deployment of UN monitors and their “unimpeded access” to East Aleppo in order to ensure the safety of evacuees and those that remain in the besieged Syrian city. Monitors are needed to prevent “mass atrocities” by parties to the conflict, said France.

Russia, which has vetoed six Security Council resolutions on Syria since the conflict began in 2011, was initially ready to block the initiative, calling it a “disaster.”

“We have no problem whatsoever with any kind of monitoring, but the idea that they should be told to go to wander around the ruins of eastern Aleppo without proper preparation and without informing everybody about what is going to happen, this has disaster written all over it,” said Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin.

After three hours of closed-door consultations on Sunday, a compromise was reached between the world powers to allow monitors to observe after consultations with “interested parties.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault noted that the resolution marks just the first step.

“France calls on each side, in particular the regime and its supporters, to be responsible so that this resolution is implemented without delay and a lasting ceasefire is put in place across the country,” he said.

Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar Jaafari criticised the move, saying that the resolution was “just another part of the continued propaganda against Syria and its fight against terrorists.”

The resolution also demands unhindered humanitarian access for the UN and international organisations to deliver life-saving assistance.

In response to the vote, Human Rights Watch’s UN Director Louis Charbonneau said that such monitoring is “crucial” and that Syrian, Russian and Iranian militaries must comply with the resolution.

“Russia and Iran have abysmal records complying with their obligations to protect civilians in Syria and allow aid access,” he said.

Charbonneau also highlighted the need for the UN General Assembly to establish a mechanism to gather and preserve evidence of serious crimes and prepare cases for prosecution, noting it could “deter those contemplating further atrocities in Syria.”

Head of Amnesty International’s UN Office Sherine Tadros echoed similar sentiments, saying that UN monitors must be allowed to investigate war crimes and the Security Council must send monitors to all areas of evacuation in the country beyond Aleppo.

“The world is watching how the UN responds to the plight of Aleppo,” she said.

According to Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, approximately 20,000 civilians have already been evacuated from east Aleppo.

The ongoing evacuation process got off to a shaky start with the breakdown of a ceasefire agreement between rebels and government forces, forcing all evacuations to be suspended. Evacuations have since been resumed as an estimated 15,000 civilians remain in the city.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described destruction caused by the 6-year civil war in Syria as a “gaping hole in the global conscience.”

“Aleppo is now a synonym for hell…peace will only prevail when it is accompanied by compassion, justice, and accountability for the abominable crimes we have seen,” he said.

Staffan de Mistura (left), UN Special Envoy for Syria, speaks with Vitaly Churkin, Permanent Representative of Russia. Credit: UN Photo/Amanda Voisard.

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 14 2016 (IPS)

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told UN Security Council members of credible reports of civilians in Aleppo being summarily executed during an emergency meeting held on Tuesday.

However despite Ban’s words of warning about the unfolding crisis, divisions within the Security Council were as evident as ever with Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin suggesting that the UN Secretariat – led by Ban – may be being used an instrument in a “cynical game.”

In his briefing Ban said that as the council met “civilian deaths and injuries continue(d) at a brutal pace”.

“The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has received reports of civilians, including women and children, in four neighbourhoods being rounded up and executed,” said Ban.

The meeting took place as Syrian government forces took the city of Aleppo. Churkin announced midway through the meeting that “the Syrian government has established control over eastern Aleppo.”

Ban noted that while “Syrian authorities have systematically denied us the presence on the ground to directly verify reports… this does not mean that the reports that we are receiving are not credible.”

However Churkin took issue with Ban’s words as well as those of other Security Council members, accusing them of spreading “fake news.”

“Young kids are being covered with dust in order to be presented as victims of bombings,” Churkin told journalists after the meeting.

In August, video and photographs of five year-old Omran Daqneesh, covered in blood and dust after his home in Aleppo was bombed, spread around the world.

In October Syrian President Bashar al-Assad claimed that the photos were manipulated and forged. Assad’s comments seemingly contradicted his own wife Asma who had told Russian television that what had happened to Aylan Kurdi and Omran Daqneesh was “a tragedy”.

While Churkin began his statement by referring to “propaganda,” “disinformation” and “fake news” it appears that Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN Bashar Ja’afari may also have engaged in this practice during the meeting itself.

During his address to the council Ja’afari held up images, including a photograph he claimed showed Syrian forces helping civilians, however according to Syrian journalist Hadi Alabdallah on Twitter one of the images was originally from Iraq.

Aside from Russia and Venezuela, the majority of UN member states addressing the meeting expressed support for Ban’s concerns for the civilians of Aleppo.

“I choose to believe the Secretary-General when he comes to this Council and tells us there are credible reports of atrocities being committed,” said Gerard van Bohemen, New Zealand’s permanent representative to the UN.

Van Bohemen turned claims from Ja’afari that the UN couldn’t independently verify reports back on the Syrian government which has refused access to independent UN observers.

“The UN is not on the ground, the UN is not able to verify, so it’s no good coming back and telling us you’ve done all these reports and investigations yourself because no one’s there to check on you,” said van Bohemen.

Looking to what happens next Ban called on pro-Assad forces “to ensure that those who have surrendered or been captured are treated humanely and in line with international law.”

Ban said that the Syrian government had chosen the path of a “total, uncompromising military victory,” a departure from UN efforts which have struggled to find a political solution to the conflict over many months of on-again, off-again talks.

“History will not easily absolve us, but this failure compels us to do even more to offer the people of Aleppo our solidarity at this moment,” said Ban.

Staffan de Mistura the UN’s Special Envoy for Syria told journalists after the meeting that the military acceleration was not likely to lead to peace, and that the conflict could “continue for many years.

“So this is actually the best moment to insist that a peace process needs to be restarted,” said de Mistura.

The UN prefers to deliver humanitarian assistance by land rather than air. UN Photo/Fred Noy.

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 3 2016 (IPS)

The UN has begun plans to deliver aid to besieged Syrian towns by air but says there are a number of obstacles in the way and that delivery by land remains its preferred choice.

The UN had promised to plan the air drops if there had been no progress made on access by land to besieged areas by June 1.

That deadline has now passed, with negligible improvement in access, and UN officials Thursday faced numerous questions from journalists about the promised airdrops.

The World Food Program “is implementing its plan to move forward with airdrops” but “there are a number of obstacles in the way,” Stephane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General said here Thursday.

“Land convoys are our preferred choice of delivery of aid,” said Dujarric, noting that “every time a humanitarian convoy moves, every time a humanitarian helicopter goes in the air or a plane goes in the air, it’s very, very risky.”

One of the numerous obstacles for aid deliveries by both air and land is obtaining the required clearances from the Syrian government, UN Senior Adviser, Jan Egeland told journalists in Geneva.

“Of the 19 (besieged) areas, 16 are besieged by the government forces or government-aligned forces,” said Egeland.

“So lack of approval is the main reason, but also fighting on the road, negotiating new roads, and negotiating security clearances by armed opposition groups is also delaying and making it difficult in many places.”

Delivery of aid by air is considered more costly and less efficient than delivery by land.

As 15 of the 19 besieged areas are urban or semi-urban, Dujarric also noted that deliveries would need to be made by helicopter not plane.

“I think everybody agrees that to go by land with 100 tons in a few trucks is better than a few tons by helicopter,” said Egeland.

However Egeland also noted that approvals for May had been much lower than expected meaning that much less aid had been delivered than in March and April. Egeland was optimistic that June would be better, noting that a land envoy had already reached Darayya for the first time since 2012.

However the delivery to Darayya has been criticised for being far too little, too late.

Egeland defended the delivery to Darayya, saying that there was misunderstanding about its purpose.

“It was there to do vaccination, which it successfully was able to do. It was there to provide some medical items, especially oriented to children, which it did. It was there to give nutritional elements asked by the mothers of Darayya. They said they needed baby milk that was rejected the last time.”

He said that the UN had “full hopes” that a second envoy with food for Darayya “will happen very soon”, adding that deliveries were also planned to other besieged areas including three other areas Zabadin, Arbin and Zamalka, where the UN hasn’t been yet.

There are currently 592,000 people in Syria in besieged areas including Al-Wae’r with a population of 75,000 people which the UN had only recently added to its list, said Egeland.

“(Al-Wae’r) is possibly the place with the worst nutritional situation of all the besieged areas,” he said, noting that although the UN had yet to deliver aid to Al-Wae’r, the Red Crescent had been able to “deliver something over the last 48 hours”.

Syrian refugee children learn to survive at a camp in north Lebanon. Credit: Zak Brophy/IPS

By Silvia Boarini
GAZA, Palestine, May 18 2016 (IPS)

“We don’t want charity, we want a long-term solution.”

That’s what a group of Palestinian refugees who fled the war in Syria and found safety in Gaza told IPS last November.

Today, their sentiment continues to be echoed in Syria and in camps and urban centres hosting refugees across the region.

New challenges

As the greatest refugee crisis since the Second World War gives no sign of relenting, the upcoming World Humanitarian Summit will offer a much needed space to discuss what a long-term solution for people fleeing protracted conflict might look like and how actors and stakeholders might go about achieving it.

Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011, the Middle East has slowly overtaken Sub-Saharan Africa to become the epicentre of this crisis and of the migratory movements of millions of people in search of a safe haven."We in America spend more money buying Coca-Cola than all the money going into Syria." -- Thomas Staal, Acting Assistant Administrator at USAID

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that today some 60 million people are displaced worldwide, that is 1 person in every 122. What experts in the field agree upon, is that traditional responses to refugees’ needs are falling far short of the mark.

At a conference on this issue that was held last June at the Middle East Institute (MEI) in Washington DC, humanitarian and political actors agreed that it is no longer enough for the UN to set up a camp at the nearest border, send in the aid professionals and assume that rich countries will foot the bill.

“That model has been shattered in recent years,” wrote scholar Greg Myre. And new patterns are emerging that demand new approaches.

Protracted conflict; the ability and willingness of refugees to reach far away places; and lack of funding for the aid industry, have been widely identified as the new elements causing a need to re-think traditional humanitarian approaches that are failing.

Protracted conflict

If in the recent past economic opportunities played a major role in people’s movements, today by far the major pushing factor is war.

In the Middle East alone, in 2015 some 15 million people had been displaced by conflict. As of May 16, 2016, the numbers have continued to rise.

Close to five million people have escaped Syria alone, while 6.6 million are IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons). According to OCHA, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in Yemen, IDPs number 2.76 Million, while in Iraq it is 3.4 million.

These numbers, of course, add to the existing five million Palestinians registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) since 1948 and 1967; to the Lebanese who had fled civil war in the 1980s; and to the Iraqi refugees who had fled the 1991 and 2003 wars. Many of them were living in Syria when the war broke out, making them refugees for a second or third time.

Refugees in the region compete for limited resources, place tremendous stress on the often wavering infrastructure recovering from prolonged conflict, and are perceived as a potential security threat by countries striving to maintain a precarious peace, such as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

Willingness to travel to faraway countries

As the region’s capacity to absorb refugees is stretched, the ability and willingness of refugees to reach faraway corners of the world is another important new element that sets this crisis apart from previous ones.

Especially in the case of Syria, the length of the conflict and the vacuum left by the lack of political solution in the foreseeable future push refugees to take the risk of settling somewhere else for the long term.

Poor living conditions in camps and limited or no educational and economic opportunities in hosting urban centres in the region are decisive factors in the move.

The people with the means to undertake a trip to Europe, the USA or Australia are often professionals whose expertise will be necessary, but unavailable, once the rebuilding kicks off. Statistics show that the further a refugee travels, the more unlikely he or she is to return. UNHCR estimates that the average length of displacement has now reached 17 years.

Lack of funding

Last, but certainly not least, this crisis is characterised by an endemic lack of funds that leaves the aid industry and UN agencies unable to provide for the basic needs of millions. As of May 2016, UNHCR is 3.5 billion dollars short on its 4.5 billion appeal for the Syria Regional Refugee Response alone.

It is often reported that it costs 10 times less to care for a refugee in the region of origin than it does in the West, and yet donor countries are slow to raise the necessary funds to improve the lives of millions escaping wars.

In 2015, Official Development Assistance (ODA) by OECD countries reached a record high, totalling 131.6 billion dollars. And yet payments still only average 0.30 percent of Gross National Income (GNI), well below the UN recommended minimum of 0.70 percent.

The funding crisis and the inability to successfully meet, let alone end, the needs of refugees has pushed the aid community to some soul searching that in the past decade has led to calls for reform, especially at the UN level, to streamline work, decrease overheads, coordinate more efficiently with local humanitarian organizations and seek alternative donors to governments.

On the subject of alternative funding sources, Thomas Staal, Acting Assistant Administrator at USAID, tellingly explained to the audience at the MEI conference last June that “we in America spend more money buying Coca-Cola than all the money going into Syria.”

Aside from highlighting that the private sector should play its part in times of crisis, the statement can be read as a comment of the need to reassess our priorities and values as a society.

The crisis is in the Middle East, not in the West

Despite clear statistics and readily available numbers on the Middle East refugee crisis, this emergency is still too often talked about in Western-centric terms and inevitably looked at as a ‘problem’, never an opportunity.

Deaths in the Mediterranean do not happen in a vacuum, they are the direct result of the shortcomings of the international community to meet the needs of refugees worldwide, to deflate conflicts and to create lasting opportunities for improvement.

The immense strain placed on the Turkish, Lebanese and Jordanian hosting populations, which have taken in 2.7, 1.05 and 0.70 million Syrians respectively, further highlights the West’s inability to add a sensible perspective to the small numbers of refugees reaching its shores.

As the healthcare and education systems of countries ravaged by war head down the path of de-development, it is imperative that lasting solutions are implemented before the situation spirals further into chaos, experts say.

The humanitarian summit could be the forum where the first steps on this road are taken.

Excerpt:

Land mines are not the only type of explosive devices that families returning home after conflicts risk stumbling across, representatives from the UN’s Mine Action Service (UNMAS) told journalists here Monday.

“There is a lot of stigma about using mines now – the real issue is just the explosive detritus of conflict,” said Paul Heslop, UNMAS chief of program planning on the International Day for Mine Awareness. This detritus, said Heslop, includes unexploded hand grenades, rockets, bombs, shells, cluster munitions, and improvised explosive devices.

This is why UNMAS does not discriminate when removing unexploded ordinances in conflict and post-conflict zones, said Agnes Marcaillou, director of the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS). For UNMAS, it doesn’t matter if the explosive device is a land mine or an improvised explosive device inside a soda can, she said.

Marcaillou described how in Iraq people are returning home to find their homes deliberately booby-trapped. “In Iraq if you decide to return to your home after Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL) has left your village you are likely to find your doors, your windows, everything will be booby trapped,” she said.

Syrian families who return home are faced with “a land littered with unexploded bombs and cluster munitions that might kill (them) or (their) children today, or perhaps tomorrow,” she said.

While some of these devices are sometimes described as improvised or homemade, they are actually sophisticated systems designed to make sure that people are not safe to return home even after the fighting has ended, said Marcaillou.

Marcaillou told journalists that it is essential that mine action is incorporated into the upcoming World Humanitarian Summit to be held in Istanbul in May. If not, it will be impossible to meet the cost of clearing mines and other unexploded devices from Iraq and Syria, which, she said, could exceed 100 million dollars. However Marcaillou said that the cost of removing the unexploded weapons was small in comparison to the amount spent on purchasing bombs and fighter jets. “There is money to clean up what money paid to do,” she said.

And while progress has been made on mine clearance, including in some of the worst affected countries such as Afghanistan and Cambodia, the international community should not yet see the problem as solved, said Heslop.

For example, in Afghanistan, he said, the number of deaths from mines has dropped from hundreds per month down to five or six, yet other types of unexploded ordinances still cause about 70 deaths per month.

And despite decades of clearing land mines from Cambodia, Heslop said that making Cambodia mine free could still take another decade, with cluster munitions posing a new challenge as people move to areas which haven’t yet been cleared.

In a statement issued to mark the International Day, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said that he was “particularly concerned about the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.”

However Ban also noted that even in extremely challenging contexts such as Syria progress is being made on removing mines. Since August 2015, some 14 tonnes of unexploded ordnance have been destroyed in Syria, he said.