Rescuing Aid in Syria

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

International aid to Syria is at an inflection point. As the number of Syrians in need continues to rise a decade into the conflict, the Assad government continues to use aid to reward its allies and punish its adversaries. The Syrian government has grown increasingly skilled at turning humanitarian assistance into a political instrument. Consequently, global efforts to support the Syrian people increasingly have the effect of politically and financially strengthening the Syrian government—the same government that is responsible for the suffering of millions of Syrians and the exile of millions more. Adding billions of dollars in aid to the current system will not save Syria; instead, it will entrench the government and nefarious actors, ensuring millions of Syrians, desperately in need of assistance, continue to suffer.

The Syrian government has succeeded in turning international concern for the misery of its people into a profit center. It skims, diverts, and redirects assistance to its own purposes, both in areas it controls and by shaping international access to areas it does not. As international donors increasingly seek to support Syria’s recovery, they do so without addressing the myriad evaluations and reports noting the systematic manipulation of the aid system.

Humanitarian assistance has never been able to address problems that are essentially political. However, the limits of humanitarian assistance do not absolve aid agencies or donor governments from the need to understand the ways in which humanitarian aid influences the political environment and vice versa. In order to have any leverage to operationalize humanitarian principles and maximize the gains of assistance for Syrians, donor governments must incorporate aid into a larger strategy for Syria and the region. Donors have a responsibility to come together to shape a step-for-step process to ensure that aid gets to all those in need and not fall into the hands of warlords. Failing to do so will perpetuate instability.

The international response to Syria’s crisis needs to focus on four principle axes:

1. The aid community must put a greater emphasis on informed action.
   Donors must make it a greater priority to understand where aid is going and to whom, and they need to conduct a rigorous and contextual evaluation of the challenges to assistance from the community to the country level.

2. Donor governments with a stake in Syria should engage in more consistent and conscientious diplomacy and negotiations. They need to negotiate on behalf of the aid sector in northwestern and northeastern Syria, and they need to negotiate collectively with the Syrian government and outside powers to prevent interference in the aid response and secure ceasefires. There is also an important role to be played with neighboring countries on cross-boundary issues such as water, security, and refugees. As donor governments engage diplomatically with the government in Damascus, they need to realize that as long as it remains in power, many refugees may never feel safe enough to return; the current government does not want them to.

3. In areas where humanitarian principles and safety can be secured, the humanitarian community must put a greater emphasis on resilience, which would improve communities’ abilities to withstand shocks to the emergency aid response. Such support is particularly important in the northwest and northeast, where millions of war-weary and displaced persons face bleak futures without this assistance. That said, there are legitimate concerns that “early recovery” assistance could effectively build state capacity and entrench demographic reengineering. Such efforts should be informed by the aforementioned comprehensive evaluation of the response and the social context of programming.

4. Donors must work much harder on the facilitation of aid. While sanctions and counterterrorism measures serve an important purpose, not only can they hamstring the provision of assistance, but they often increase the power of sanctioned actors. More direct assurances to banks or even creating a banking channel for aid and harmonizing regulations among donor governments, while ensuring due diligence to ensure that suppliers and partners are not involved in human rights violations, can ease these burdens.

The Syrian government’s continued manipulation of humanitarian aid will entrench the deprivation and oppression that started the war, prolonging instability and displacement far into the future. While aid alone cannot fix Syria, conscientious investments in human security through the steps suggested here can alleviate suffering and give a traumatized population hope. If donor governments are able to break the rising pattern of abuse, the positive influence of donors and the benefits to the Syrian people would be enormous. If they are unable or unwilling to do so, the failure will haunt the Syrian people for decades to come.