ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - As the eleventh anniversary of the Syrian uprising is marked this week, the humanitarian situation for Syrians - particularly those remaining in the country - could not be starker, a recent report to the United Nations has warned.
On Monday, while the UN Special Envoy for Syria urged a political solution to the conflict including engagement with Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government, the political wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Rojava requested greater international support in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, calling it “the only way to save the country and achieve security and stability in the region.” A political solution to the conflict remains far-off.
Peaceful rallies against Assad escalated into a brutal war that, eleven years on, has killed at least 350,000 Syrians and displaced more than half of the pre-war population. According to the UNHCR, 6.6 million Syrians are refugees; mostly in neighbouring countries including the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
For those remaining in the country, the poverty rate in Syria is an unprecedented 90 percent and over 14 million people in Syria depend on humanitarian aid, a report released last week by the UN Syria Commission into the country’s human rights situation over the last six months of 2021 found.
Warning that “Syrians are staring into a new abyss as violence escalates both in terms of military skirmishes and bombardments and in terms of abductions and killings away from the conflict zones,” the report presented grave violations of human rights including a bride killed at her wedding alongside her four sisters by pro-government forces.
“An estimated 90 percent of the population is living below the poverty line, and the national currency lost close to 80 percent of its value in 2021,” it said.
Speaking at a press conference to launch the report on Wednesday, Paulo Pinheiro, the chair of the commission, warned of the harsh conditions. “Many Syrian IDPs in the northwest are still living in flimsy tents, stuck in snow, rain, mud - and yet, some actors seem to spend more energy on preventing aid to get to them rather than facilitating it,” he said.
Pinheiro also drew parallels to the role of Russia in Ukraine today with Syria. Russia intervened on the side of Assad’s government in 2015, and many Syrians who lost everything in Russian-backed offensives have drawn comparisons with the conflict in Ukraine. The report detailed fourteen attacks by Syrian and Russian forces in northwest Syria in the past few months in which scores of children were killed, including on their way to school.
In 14 attacks by Syrian and Russian forces that @UNCoISyria detailed in the northwest in the past few months, scores of children were killed, including on their way to school. New report: https://t.co/UTQ3WxDoIw Remarks by @UNCoISyria Chair: https://t.co/ja2lrepsSu pic.twitter.com/SWdE1b9neX
— UN Syria Commission (@UNCoISyria) March 11, 2022
“We can only hope that world leaders are doing everything they can to avoid a similar fate for Ukraine,” Pinheiro said.
“Warring parties’ attempts to resolve the Syrian conflict militarily over the past decade have enabled the violation of nearly every core human right, the commission of almost every crime against humanity listed in the Rome statute and nearly every war crime,” he warned.
There are concerns too, for the negative consequences of the Ukraine crisis on a potential political situation in Syria. “Inflation is already skyrocketing, and the government has begun rationing essential commodities including fuel. Prices of imports have shot up and we should remember that most of Syria’s wheat import comes from Ukraine or Russia,” he continued. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has seen the collapse of diplomatic relations with Moscow, inevitably compromising diplomacy in Syria.
“As the conflict in Syria enters its twelfth year - marking another grim milestone - Syrians continue to suffer in profound ways, and the hardship is only deepening,” the UN’s Special Envoy for Syria Geir O Pedersen said on Monday, adding that “above all, the Syrian people need, and deserve, a political solution to this conflict.”
Last month, Pedersen met with Syrian officials in Damascus, including Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, engaging with the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic, as well as the opposition Syrian Negotiations Commission. Before then, talks were held in Geneva in October where Pedersen reported that the Syrian government’s refusal to negotiate revisions to the country’s constitution was a key reason for their failure.
The Syrian government currently controls most of the lower two-thirds of the country, the Kurdish-led SDF control the northeast, and armed groups opposing Damascus control the northwest.
The political wing of the SDF, the Syrian Democratic Council, on Monday commemorated the anniversary of the Syrian uprising and called for greater international support in Rojava, calling it “the only way to save the country and achieve security and stability in the region.”
“The Syrian Democratic Council reaffirms its commitment to defend the demands of the martyrs of freedom and dignity and believes that the better solution in Syria is achieving a political transition to establish a democratic, pluralistic and decentralized state,” the council said.
Syrian Kurds have been key US allies on the ground in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) since the group controlled swathes of land in Syria and Iraq in 2014. The US has provided ammunition and military support to the SDF as well as mediating between Kurdish ruling and opposition parties, although US officials have repeatedly said that their support for Syrian Kurds is limited only to the fight against ISIS.
On Friday, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres issued an additional statement commemorating the “horrific war that has devastated Syria and its people,” calling for the courage and determination to “move beyond rhetorical commitments to peace and to do all that is necessary to reach a negotiated political solution in line with Security Council resolution 2254 (2015).”
The Syria Justice and Accountability Centre’s third annual report on the state of justice in Syria, also published last week, warns against the normalisation of ties with the Syrian government among neighbouring states in what it suggests are attempts to force the return of Syrian refugees.
“Steps to normalize relations and weaken asylum protections, detailed later in the report, condone impunity and must be halted and reversed to ensure the safety of Syrian refugees,” it advises.
The Kurdistan Region is home to over 240,000 Syrian refugees, 30% of whom live in the Region’s 36 camps.
Just one location, Kawergosk camp, established by the KRG and aid agencies during the mass exodus from Syria in 2013 and funded through the Barzani Charity Foundation (BCF), is today home to over 8,000 Syrian refugees forced to leave their homes - the majority of whom share an ethnic Kurdish identity, drawing from Qamishli, Jazeera, and Hasaka in the country’s northeast provinces.
Around 100,000 displaced Syrians live in the Kurdistan Region independently outside of camp structures. A report published by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) last month into the working rights and quality of employment among Syrian refugees in the Kurdistan Region called on authorities to do more to harness the untapped and underserved potential of the abiding refugee population.
