We cannot turn away from the ongoing suffering in Syria
The pace of armed conflict in Syria has slowed down, but the food and water scarcity and poverty are cause for alarm. With the severe economic deterioration devastating the country, the nightmare is far from over.
A second decade of hardship
Talk to people anywhere in Syria and they will say life has never been this unaffordable and coping has never been this difficult. The crisis has brought about a raft of inescapable measures that became daily routine; going to bed hungry, queuing up for hours to get hold of a bag of bread, and burning toxic plastic to stay warm.
While the world looks away, Syrians have continued in this brutal fight for survival. They no longer have to decide what to go without, but fear that there’s nothing left at all. The money that would get you two bags of bread last year will not buy you one today.
Empty pots and pans
Even with three people, including one child, working in Maysaa’s family in rural Hamah, food variety is vanishing quickly. Once the price of an item goes up in the market, it drops off the ever-shrinking list of options for this family. Maysaa’s five children are now surviving on one type of food at a time.
We used to be able to provide them with varieties of food, but not anymore. Now you are blessed if you can provide a bowl of yogurt.
Price inflation and a lack of jobs have crushed people’s livelihoods, leaving more than half of the population in need of aid. Of those, there are 5.5 million children and women who are pregnant or breastfeeding living on an inadequate diet.
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) teams have heard how even prescribed medication is being categorised into ‘essential and non-essential’ based merely on cost, leaving the most vulnerable, including people with disabilities and the elderly, at higher risk. Patients who cannot pay for surgery have resorted to painkillers.
Issam* is from northern Syria. He explained to us the difficult choices he is forced to make in taking care of his family. “We just can’t afford it,” he says about the medication his small children need. “We only get medicine if it is too critical. Otherwise, we don’t even try [to buy it].”
Issam said the price hikes are hurting people. His family is coming out of a long, battering winter during which they relied on discarded plastic bags to cook and keep them warm. This spring, he doesn’t know whether there will be light in his tent, a meal for his children, or a job for himself.
Murad* is wondering the same. At the moment, he can only find work for one out of every ten days and is forced to watch his debt pile up for the rest of the month. Murad has sold some of his and his wife’s clothes to refill the water tank.
Children are also feeling the shortages. Ayman, now displaced in rural Aleppo, had to leave school before his tenth birthday. Even with his father working on his delivery motorcycle, it is still a matter of “one day we eat, the other we don’t.”
One day we eat, the other we don’t.
Do not forget about Syria
There is a worry from organisations on the ground that, despite the continued suffering, interest in what is happening in the country is waning.
While the scale of armed conflict has retreated, civilian casualties have only slightly dropped from 2,059 in 2020 to 1,874 last year. Displacement – now at 6.9 million including two million in camps – continues well into the eleventh year, mainly due to open frontlines but also because people have no shelter, jobs or services.
All these factors, made worse by one of the worst drought spells in modern history, threaten to drag Syria into a multi-decade human catastrophe. Should the status-quo persist, NRC has forecasted that displacement could increase into the second decade of the crisis.
People in Syria need basic services, jobs and to live in dignity. Governments of influence and donors cannot afford to let this cycle of hardship go on. With the will and reaffirmed commitment, they can spare the people of Syria another decade of this nightmare.
*Names have been changed.