Far from the cameras now trained on Ukraine, Syria continues to sink into an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis. Nearly twelve years after the start of the civil war, some 15 million Syrians need humanitarian aid in this country of 22 million inhabitants. According to the UN, 90% of the population now lives below the poverty line. “Before, people were afraid of dying in the fighting and under the bombs, but now they are afraid of dying of hunger”, drops Moutaz Adham, director of Oxfam in Syria, passing through Canada these days.
According to the Syrian of origin who returned to live in his native country in 2010 after spending 26 years in the United States, Syria is facing the world’s most serious humanitarian crisis, while the vast majority of its population struggles to eat at home. hunger. “The average monthly salary of a public sector employee [le gouvernement est le plus grand employeur] is 92,000 Syrian pounds, while the cost to feed a family of four for a month is 350,000 Syrian pounds,” he points out.
A dead end that places millions of Syrians in a situation of food insecurity. “People are suffering more today than at the height of the military campaign,” notes Moutaz Adham, recalling that in the first months after the outbreak of the civil war in 2011, around one million Syrians needed help. humanitarian. More than a decade later, as crises accumulate in Syria (armed violence, economic crisis, economic sanctions, pandemic, instability in neighboring Lebanon), this number has increased 15 times.
Yet over the years, the country is said to have received US$35 billion in humanitarian aid. But fears that this money will benefit – in one way or another – the regime of Bashar el-Assad have weighed down some of the efforts of humanitarian aid organizations, said Moutaz Adham.
Sustainable solutions
Typically, during the first year of a crisis like the one in Syria, “emergency aid” is channeled through humanitarian aid agencies. For example, if a community no longer has access to drinking water, water is brought in by truck. But later, in the so-called “early recovery” phase, more durable solutions are found. Thus, rather than continuing to bring water by truck, the aqueduct network is being rehabilitated.
“But since it is more sustainable and we are working on the infrastructure to restore it to a functional state, it is interpreted by many donors as being actions that can support the Syrian government”, reports the humanitarian. Even today, therefore, most of the humanitarian aid provided to Syria is used to finance “emergency aid”, he laments.
People are suffering more today than at the height of the military campaign
“There is no dignity with this kind of help. People line up for the distribution of water, food. It is not an aid that is sustainable for the population […] and which allows Syrians to resume the course of their lives. »
But aren’t the fears that this aid benefits the band of the al-Assad regime legitimate? By helping the country not to collapse, don’t the humanitarian aid organizations indirectly contribute to helping this bloodthirsty government?
“No,” replies Oxfam’s director for Syria without hesitation. There is a difference between political authority and public institutions. It is in no one’s interest for the public sector, with its hospitals, its schools, its water systems, to collapse. Already, cholera is making its way through the population, struggling with poor quality water. The crisis could therefore worsen further.
Currently, Oxfam is carrying out several projects in the regions of the country taken over by the al-Assad regime. These projects aim to bring drinking water to communities, restore sewage systems, restore bakeries to working order and help farmers irrigate their land, among other things. Oxfam currently has no projects in areas under opposition control.
Moutaz Adham, who lives in Damascus with his family, believes that this in no way affects the neutrality and impartiality of the organization. Most NGOs working in government-controlled areas do not have access to the northwest of the country, and vice versa, he says. “We focus our response on needs,” he says. […] As a humanitarian actor, our compass is the humanitarian imperatives. »
Depoliticize
To respond adequately to the crying needs of the Syrian population, it is imperative to depoliticize the humanitarian response in Syria, says Moutaz Adham. “Politics passes [en ce moment] before the interests of the people,” he said, adding that he wanted to convince donor countries to fund more “early recovery” projects.
After sounding his speech at UN headquarters in New York last week, Oxfam’s director in Syria will meet with emissaries from Global Affairs Canada in the coming days. For 2022, Canada has committed $229 million in humanitarian assistance for Syria. But for the first time in several years, no Oxfam project has been funded in Syria this year by Global Affairs Canada.
“For us, losing this funding was an indication that the environment is changing. It’s a trend [mondiale] “, laments Moutaz Adham, who says he is well aware that the crisis in Ukraine monopolizes a good part of the envelopes of donor countries. “Syria is becoming a forgotten crisis,” he regrets.