Millions of Syrians are coping with stress on multiple fronts as the civil war drags on, a severe economic crisis engulfs the country, they recover from a series of deadly earthquakes, and conflicts in other parts of the world detract from the urgency of their situation.
In June, the World Food Program said it would be forced to end food assistance to 2.5 million Syrians inside the country this month, if it does not receive at least $180 million in donations to fund programs through the end of this year.
Syrian refugees are not faring any better. U.N. humanitarian appeals to assist them in the region are significantly underfunded.
In Jordan, the government hosts about 1.3 million refugees, the majority of whom are Syrians. The WFP assists 465,000 of the most vulnerable Syrians, but it had to cut its cash assistance starting this month to about 346,000 Syrians living in local communities because of funding shortfalls. The impact of such cuts is severe for struggling families.
“What we are seeing — they are increasing in debt. The average debt of families living in communities is about $1,500. It’s huge,” Alberto Correia Mendes, WFP’s country director in Jordan, told VOA. “We are seeing people taking children out of school to go to the streets and beg. We are seeing an increase in early marriages for girls.”
In a tiny apartment in a heavily populated neighborhood of the Jordanian capital, Amman, Salwa Salameh, a 30-year-old mother of five from the Syrian city of Raqqa, struggled to feed her family before the aid cuts. Her husband, a construction worker, was injured in a work accident before they fled to Jordan in 2014, and he’s had difficulty finding steady work since.
“You might notice the furniture in the salon, I sold it, because my husband is sick,” she told VOA of her bare living room that had just a thin mattress and a mat. “I don’t want to burden anyone. And now they are cutting it more and I don’t know what to do. The aid was there to help us, but now it’s gone.”
In July, the family’s cash assistance from WFP has gone from about $32 per month per person in the household to $21. The family is already four months behind on its rent and electricity, with little chance of catching up.
WFP’s Mendes said more cuts could be in store by September if fresh funding is not received in the coming weeks – including to the most vulnerable refugees who live in camps. Around $40 million is needed to restore full assistance through the end of 2023 for Syrian refugees in Jordan.
Time to leave?
Nearly 7 million Syrians are refugees, mostly in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, according to the International Organization of Migration. After more than a decade of hosting them, some countries are starting to press the refugees to return to Syria. International refugee and human rights law prohibits countries from sending home people involuntarily or if they face persecution or other dangers.
Human Rights Watch criticized the Lebanese army this week for having “arbitrarily arrested and summarily deported” thousands of Syrian refugees, including unaccompanied children, to Syria between April and May of this year.
“Syrians in Lebanon are living in constant fear that they could be picked up and sent back to nightmarish conditions, regardless of their refugee status,” HRW’s Ramzi Kaiss said in a statement.
Turkey hosts more than 3.5 million Syrian refugees and their presence has caused building resentment in a country that is suffering economic woes and the aftereffects of this year’s deadly earthquake.
In the lead-up to Turkey’s presidential election in May, incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan promised voters the return of a million Syrians to opposition-controlled areas of northwest Syria within a year, while his main opponent, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, said he would send the refugees home within two years.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi met Monday in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who until recently was a pariah member of the Arab League. According to Jordan’s official Petra news agency, “the meeting focused on the voluntary return of refugees and necessary steps to enable it.”
The coinciding of Safadi’s meeting with Assad and the food aid cuts this month has unnerved some refugees who fear the timing is intended to accelerate their departure. But in Amman, Salwa Salameh said she has not felt any pressure to leave and has no plans to do so. “If I go back, I would be homeless,” she said.
Cross-border aid
Meanwhile, in New York, the U.N. Security Council is expected to vote Friday on the extension of the mandate allowing aid to flow from Turkey to 4.1 million Syrians living in opposition-held areas of the country’s northwest.
Over the last few years, Russia, with Syrian government backing, has forced the Security Council to shrink the operation and has threatened to completely shutter it. Since 2021, Moscow has only agreed to 6-month renewals, instead of the year-long ones the council had approved since the operation was established in 2014, and which humanitarians have requested.
On Wednesday, the U.N. humanitarian chief and the heads of six U.N. agencies urged council members to renew this “vital pipeline.”
“Every month, it allows the United Nations and our partners to reach 2.7 million people with medicines, safe water, food, shelter supplies and protection services from across the border,” they said.
Humanitarians have called for aid access to northwest Syria to continue and be expanded.
