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Syria may sink if support lifeline is delayed, says IOM chief, while winter compounds Gaza misery

The head of the UN migration agency stressed on Friday that Syria is in no position to take back millions of Syrians following the fall of the Assad regime, while there is an urgent need to “re-evaluate” sanctions impacting the war-ravaged country.

“We are not promoting large-scale returns; the communities frankly are just not ready to absorb the people who are displaced and would come home…it will overwhelm the country,” said Amy Pope, Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). “Many have returned to find their find their homes reduced to rubble,” she noted.

Speaking in Geneva shortly after returning from Damascus where she held talks with representatives of the caretaker government, Ms. Pope described how 14 years of war had destroyed “hospitals, schools, community centres” and much else. “Rebuilding homes is just one part of the solution, but [Syrians] also need access to healthcare and essential services to feel secure and lay the foundations for recovery.”

More than half of Syria’s population has been displaced, some 16.7 million people need humanitarian assistance and well over six million Syrian refugees have sought shelter abroad.

“The needs for funding - both financial resources, political resources - are going to be enormous,” Ms. Pope continued, confirming that IOM “will be part of any effort to help address the situation there”, including potentially at an upcoming Syria reconstruction conference planned by the French Government in January.

And yet the task of rebuilding and investing in Syria following the overthrow of the Assad regime by Hayat-Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) fighters and others remains complicated by sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union, following the violent repression of pro-democracy protests in 2011 that escalated into civil war.

On Thursday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres appealed for international solidarity with Syrians “until conditions are met for all sanctions to be removed” by the Member States that imposed them, while also insisting on the urgent need to deliver humanitarian aid and support efforts to rebuild the economy.

Echoing that appeal, IOM’s Ms. Pope described the impact of sanctions in Syria, where “people do not have access to cash…they do not have access to credit”. Goods are exchanged rather than purchased and salaries “are extremely low and often insufficient to meet their most basic of needs…So to rebuild the situation, there will be a need to re-evaluate those sanctions.”

Also briefing in Geneva, UN human rights office (OHCHR) spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan insisted that “whoever is in power, the obligations of the States remain the same, and that is protection of all human rights for all Syrians. When it comes to sanctions, it is important that any sanctions imposed by any party take into consideration the importance of humanitarian aid for the civilians. This should not be affected in any way.”

Providing insight into her high-level meetings in Damascus, Ms. Pope described a “sense of openness” to the international community and a willingness to engage with it – a message that was “echoed throughout by all members of the caretaker government to all parties, whether they were other members of the diplomatic corps or other members of the UN family”.

IOM has been unable to operate in Syria since 2018. Today, more than 90 per cent of Syrians live below the poverty line and 800,000 people have been newly displaced in recent weeks, presenting a massive new humanitarian emergency. “Frankly, across the board we’ve had some pretty serious challenges meeting those humanitarian needs, largely because of the barriers put in place by the Assad government, but also because of the ongoing conflict,” Ms. Pope explained, in reference to ongoing clashes across Syria.

Important as immediate relief aid is for Syria, the IOM chief said that it should be accompanied by a “stabilizing” of the situation there. This would need to involve “justice, reparation and inclusivity”, she said, but also housing, land and property rights that are “key and at the heart of community stabilization in the context of the returns that we anticipate”.

Health care in peril

Meanwhile, echoing deep concerns over the scale of needs and “tremendous hardships” that Syrians still face, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) launched an appeal on Friday to raise $56.4 million over the next six months.

Displaced communities continue to live in overcrowded conditions in formal camps and shelters, with too little to eat and succumbing to respiratory infections and other communicable diseases including diarrhoea and scabies, warned Dr. Christina Bethke, Acting WHO Representative in Syria.

Speaking from Damascus, Dr. Bethke described one WHO assessment team’s mission to Idlib in the northwest of the country. They spoke to “dedicated surgeons who have worked tirelessly during this escalation over the last three weeks, often under attack and in order to save lives. One surgeon shared the words of these patients, saying, ‘We finally sleep at night, no longer worrying about being bombarded.’”

Funding for WHO’s appeal will sustain critical health services during the transition period, including 141 health facilities in northwest Syria that are at risk of “imminent closure in the coming weeks”, owing to a lack of resources.

“The health infrastructure is severely strained and we saw in just three weeks during this escalation 36 attacks on health care have been reported and over half the country’s hospitals are non-functional,” Dr. Bethke said.

Winter and ongoing siege add to Gazans’ misery

In Gaza, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned that hunger, malnutrition and dire living conditions continue to endanger people’s lives the enclave. “Right now, over 96 per cent of women and children in Gaza cannot meet their basic nutritional needs,” said Rosalia Bollen, UNICEF communication specialist.

Speaking from Amman, she noted that the most northerly part of Gaza has been under a near total siege for 75 days. This has largely prevented humanitarian assistance from reaching youngsters in need there “for more than 10 weeks”, she said.

“The suffering is not just physical, it is also psychological…Children are cold, they're wet, they're barefoot; I see many children who still wear summer clothes and with cooking gas gone, there's also lots of children I see scavenging through piles of garbage looking for plastic they can burn.”

That alert came as the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) reported that heavy winter rains had fallen overnight and into Friday morning, with more expected come nightfall.

“It’s impossible for families to shelter in these conditions,” explained UNRWA Senior Emergency Officer Louise Wateridge, speaking from Nuseirat in central Gaza. “Most people are living under fabric, they don’t even have waterproof structures and 69 per cent of the buildings here have been damaged or destroyed. There’s absolutely nowhere for people to shelter from these elements.”

Continuing aid obstacles imposed by the Israeli authorities have meant that humanitarians have had to prioritize food over shelter, leaving Gazans desperate and at risk from food stampedes.

“The certainty of winter has been the only thing that the United Nations has been able to plan for,” Ms. Wateridge maintained. “And yet we have still not yet been facilitated to bring in enough shelter supplies for people, because we have had to prioritize food. Women have been crushed to death waiting for a piece of bread.”

She added: “The world is not seeing what's going on with these people. You know, an entire society here is now a graveyard… Over two million people are trapped. They cannot escape. And people continue to have basic needs deprived and it just feels like every path here that you could possibly take is leading to death.”

Middle East crisis updates - IOM, OHCHR, UNICEF, UNRWA, WHO 20 December 2024

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