Attachments
Syria continued to face one of the most complex emergencies in the world. Unprecedented humanitarian needs are compounded by displacement inside the country and across its borders, extensive destruction of civilian and social services infrastructure, devastating impact on the economy, and most importantly, the breakdown of the social fabric that stitched the country together for decades. Today, 90% of people in Syria live in poverty, most are unable to make ends meet or bring food to the table. Families have had their resources depleted, with limited employment opportunities, skyrocketing prices, and shortage of basic supplies.
For most people, the current socio-economic challenges represent some of the harshest and most challenging circumstances they have faced since the beginning of the crisis in 2011. The February 2023 earthquakes in north Syria and Türkiye added agony to an already catastrophic situation, increasing the strain on services, causing displacement, and inflicting widespread damage. In 2024, 16.7 million people were in need humanitarian assistance. This is the highest number of people in need ever recorded in Syria since 2011. The number of children in need was more than 6.5 million. This situation was made worse by the regional conflict and escalation of hostilities in Lebanon, which influenced the influx of Lebanese and Syrians fleeing from the conflict back to Syria, this further exposed children and communities to multiple protection risks. The overthrow of the previous regime in December compounded further all protection risks for children.
Girls and boys were exposed to multiple child protection risks, including those with disabilities at heightened risk of violence, abuse, neglect, and exploitation and needed critical child protection services. Children faced several risks raging from grave violations against children, risk of being killed, injured, recruited, used in hostilities, tortured, detained, abducted, and sexually abused remained a significant concern. Insecurity and economic hardship continued to exacerbate child protection concerns leading to harmful coping mechanisms, such as worst forms of labor and child marriage. In addition, high levels of psychosocial distress prevailed among children and caregivers due to multiple stresses, continued escalation of the conflict, poverty, lack of civil documentation such as birth certificates and restrictions of movement limiting access to social services.
Child Protection Area of Responsibility Priorities for 2024
The CP AoR Responsibility for 2024 worked on the premise of the Minimum Standards for Child Protection in humanitarian Settings, benchmarked on the Core Commitments for Children in Humanitarian Action guidance to ensure that CP AoR partners provide specialized child protection prevention and response services to ensure children are safe from violence, abuse and exploitation in their homes, schools and communities through a comprehensive package of services spanning from mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) ,gender-based violence response, positive parenting programs and explosive ordnance risk education. Advocacy initiatives were a corner stone for all the response ensuring that the rights of children were highlighted at any given opportunity to various stakeholders.