Beirut, Lebanon — Rudaina al-Salim and her family live in a tent in rebel-held northwest Syria and struggle to find enough water for drinking and other basic needs like cooking and washing. Her camp north of Idlib city has not received help in six months.
“We used to receive food aid and hygiene items,” said the mother of four. “Now we haven’t had much for a while.”
Al-Salim’s story is similar to that of many in this region of Syria, where the majority of the 5.1 million people have been internally displaced – sometimes more than once – in the country’s civil war, now in their fourteenth year, and depend on help to survive.
UN agencies and international humanitarian organizations have struggled for years with shrinking budgets, further exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and conflicts elsewhere. The wars in Ukraine and Sudan and, more recently, Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip are the focus of the world’s attention.
Syria’s war, which has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half of the country’s pre-war population of 23 million, has long remained largely frozen, as have efforts to find a viable political solution to put an end to it. Meanwhile, millions of Syrians have been pushed into poverty and struggle to access food and healthcare as the economy deteriorates on the country’s front lines.
Along with deepening poverty, there is growing hostility in neighboring countries hosting Syrian refugees and struggling with their own crises.
Aid organizations are now making their annual presentations to donors ahead of a fundraising conference for Syria on Monday in Brussels. But aid workers believe the promises will likely not be enough and further aid cuts will follow.
“We’ve gone from helping 5.5 million a year to about 1.5 million people in Syria,” Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, told The Associated Press. He spoke during a recent visit to Lebanon, which is home to nearly 780,000 registered Syrian refugees and hundreds of thousands of other undocumented ones.
“When I look around the world, this is the (aid) program that has been reduced the most in the shortest amount of time,” Skau said.
So far, only 6% of the U.N. appeal for aid to Syria in 2024 has been secured ahead of Monday’s annual fundraising conference hosted by the European Union, said David Carden, U.N. deputy regional humanitarian coordinator. for Syria.
For Syria’s northwestern region, that means the UN can only feed 600,000 of the 3.6 million people who face food insecurity, meaning they lack access to sufficient food. The UN says some 12.9 million Syrians are food insecure across the country.
The UN hopes the Brussels conference can raise more than $4 billion in “life-saving aid” to support nearly two-thirds of the 16.7 million Syrians in need, both inside the war-torn country and elsewhere. neighboring countries, particularly Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
At last year’s conference, donors pledged $10.3 billion (about $6 billion in grants and the rest in loans) just months after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Turkey and much of northern Syria, killing to more than 59,000 people, including 6,000 in Syria.
For northwest Syria, an enclave under rebel control, aid “is literally a matter of life and death” this year, Carden told the AP during a recent visit to Idlib province. Without funding, 160 health centers would close by the end of June. he said.
The head of the International Rescue Committee for Syria, Tanya Evans, said needs are “at their highest level ever”, with increasing numbers of Syrians turning to child labor and going into debt to pay for food and basic goods. .
In Lebanon, where nearly 90% of Syrian refugees live in poverty, they also face dwindling aid and growing resentment from Lebanese, who have struggled with their own country’s economic crisis since 2019. Disgruntled officials have accused refugees of increased crime and competition at work. market.
Disputing Lebanese political parties have united in a call to crack down on undocumented Syrian migrants and demand that refugees return to so-called “safe zones” in Syria.
UN agencies, human rights groups and Western governments say no such areas exist.
Um Omar, a Syrian refugee from Homs, works in a grocery store in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, an impoverished community that once gave a warm welcome to Syrian refugees.
Because of his job, he is able to bring home a package of bread and some vegetables every day to feed his family of five. They live rent-free in a tent on land belonging to the grocery store owners.
“I have to leave the children early in the morning without breakfast so I can work,” she said, asking to be identified only by her nickname, which in Arabic means “Omar’s mother.” She fears retaliation due to increased hostilities against Syrians.
The dwindling UN aid they receive does not cover the bills. Her husband, who shares her fears for her safety, used to work as a day laborer but has rarely left the house for weeks.
She says deportation to Syria, where President Bashar Assad’s government is firmly entrenched, would spell doom for her family.
“If my husband is returned to Syria, he will go to prison or face mandatory military service,” she explains.
Still, many in Lebanon tell their family: “You took away our livelihoods,” Um Omar said. There are also those who tell them they should leave, he added, so that the Lebanese “finally have a break.”
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Albam reported from Harbnoush, Syria.
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