Humanitarian crisis | Lack of humanitarian aid and increasing corruption exacerbate the humanitarian situation of people in Idlib

Idlib residents are living in a dire humanitarian situation, with the proliferation of hundreds of makeshift camps and the lack of support by humanitarian organizations.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has monitored a significant decrease in the number of food baskets provided to displaced persons. Meanwhile, the support provided to some service projects has been suspended in addition to reduce support to others, under the pretext of closing the borders and coronavirus crisis.

Humanitarian organizations partially support projects of pumping drinking water and bakeries in order to provide bread and water at reduced prices.

On the other hand, areas under the control of Tahrir al-Sham and the “Salvation Government” are breeding grounds for the spread of corruption. This has encouraged the majority of aid workers to increasingly commit shameful acts, where taking pictures of poor families has become the foremost concern for them, in order to get funds.

Observatory sources have said that a relief worker threatened a displaced person to “discipline and arrest him”, because of taking pictures of the employees while insulting displaced persons in a camp in north-western Syria.

Moreover, displaced persons from Damascus and countryside in the city of Dana, north of Idlib, said that aid had been cut off to them for more than a year, and they added that the management of the organizations in cooperation with local councils and the Department of displaced persons affairs of the ” Salvation Government” were stealing the relief allocated to them and giving it to their relatives and acquaintances, while selling the rest to the merchants, and they are all over the province.

But sadly, the residents of Idlib and countryside are just figures and data on the lists of humanitarian organizations and a way to attract and steal support with high professionalism by a group of emirs, and those who act in the name of religion and a group of corrupt people.