Syrian Arab Republic: Humanitarian Access Severity Overview (June 2023)

Background and methodology

Humanitarian access concerns humanitarian actors’ ability to reach populations affected by crises, as well as an affected population’s ability to access humanitarian assistance and services. Humanitarian access is therefore a fundamental pre-requisite to effective humanitarian action. Full and unimpeded access is essential to establish humanitarian operations, move humanitarian goods and personnel where they are needed, provide services and carry out other humanitarian activities, and for affected populations to fully benefit from the assistance made available.

Every six months, humanitarian partners working in Syria collectively produce an Access Severity Overview (ASO) that gauges the impact that humanitarian access constraints have on 1) the ability of humanitarian partners to reach people in need (PiN) and 2) the ability of affected populations’ to reach humanitarian assistance across all three humanitarian response modalities (HCT, HLG and NES NGO Forum)* in all 270 sub-districts of Syria, where 15.3 million PiN of humanitarian assistance live. The exercise includes organizing multiple focus group discussions (FGDs) with humanitarian partner groups working in the field – UN agencies, INGOs and NNGOs – aimed at soliciting inputs/perceptions from humanitarian workers on main access challenges and their impact on the humanitarian operation using a 5-point severity scale. Outcomes of the exercise are then used to formulate strategies focused on mitigating the impact humanitarian access constraints have on the humanitarian operation. In response to humanitarian partners’ request, this fourth edition of the ASO used a 5-point severity scale instead of the 3-point scale - used in all previous three editions - in order to produce more granular analyses, particularly when juxtaposing access severity levels with levels of humanitarian need and reach. All results from the previous three exercises have been converted to values that adhere to the 5-point scale to ease comparability between the four ASO editions.

NOTE: The information presented for north-east Syria (NES) includes a combined severity scoring based on the expert and collective understanding of the NES Forum coordinated partners and the Syria HCT partners. However, scores presented for areas receiving cross-border assistance in north-west Syria (NWS) were primarily provided by HLG partners only.

Key findings (as of May 2023)

This edition involved 54 focus group discussions that were facilitated in May 2023 by humanitarian access teams from the three humanitarian response modalities in Syria. After compiling the results, severity of access was found to be as follows:

• Very High in nine sub-districts (representing 1 per cent of PiN – 104 K)

• High in 17 sub-districts (representing 4 per cent of PiN – 702 K)

• Moderate in 50 sub-districts (representing 17 per cent of PiN – 2.6 M)

• Low in 99 sub-districts (representing 45 per cent of PiN – 6.8 M)

• Very low in 95 sub-districts (representing 33 per cent of PiN – 5M)