War and coronavirus have brought Syria ‘to its knees’

A decade of war, compounded by the coronavirus crisis, has brought the whole Syrian population “to its knees”, the Secretary-General of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said.

Robert Mardini told The National that as leaders met at a Brussels donors’ conference on Syria that a confluence of war, economic deprivation and now the coronavirus outbreak had made a desperate situation in Syria even worse.

“It is really the combination of a really dramatically deteriorating economic situation that you are seeing now that is hitting hard all segments of the population,” he said.

“Then you add to this the impact of extended sanctions, the simmering Covid crisis and let us not forget that there is still fighting going on in many parts of the country.”

“All this is pushing people towards deeper poverty and hunger. And over the past three months we have really witnessed a deteriorating situation in Syria affecting many, many people,” Mr Mardini said.

The figures paint a bleak picture of the situation for Syrians with 11 million people dependent on humanitarian assistance and 3.9 million described as food insecure.

These figures are the legacy of a decade of war but problems continue to mount with 300,000 Syrians in the past month registering with the government for humanitarian assistance.

The online conference in Brussels, which concludes on Tuesday, has examined the prospects of a lasting ceasefire, a political solution to the conflict and looked to address the humanitarian need of Syrians, the EU has said.

Last year the third Brussels Conference raised a record €6.2 billion (Dh25.6bn) in pledges for 2019, and a further €2.1bn for 2020 onwards.

Mr Mardini said it was positive that the conference was going ahead but explained humanitarian organisations were fighting an uphill battle as Syrians and donor countries alike dealt with the coronavirus pandemic.

“It is a challenge of course, because at the moment the international community is grappling with a pandemic of massive proportions, hitting hard all countries including donor countries so it is even more challenging than previous Syria pledging conferences,” he said.

The ICRC with its partners have had to adapt to the realities of Covid-19 on the ground, where resources were already in short supply.

At Syria’s Kurdish-run Al Hol camp in north-east Syria, medical facilities have had to be adapted to deal with the disease and daily meals are brought to women and children directly to avoid crowded queues.

“Detention centres are typically the kind of places where any outbreak or any spread of disease is higher than anywhere else. The IDP camps such as Al Hol and anywhere else in the country are also places of vulnerability,” the ICRC director said.

Mr Mardini has urged the international community, in the face of the humanitarian crisis in Syria, to find a political solution to the conflict or at least to allow better access to international organisations.

“This is important to remind the international community, not only for parties to the conflict to respect the rules of war but also for other countries to exert their influence so that international humanitarian law is respected,” he said.

“We can only hope that maybe now the criticality of the situation on the ground will amount to an electroshock for the international community to shift towards a place of more consensus to first help a population that is now badly effected by more than a decade of conflict and move the needle on a political dialogue that will build a more sustainable political outcome to this crisis.”