By Sonja Meyer, CARE’s Partnership Manager
The heinous attack against a UN humanitarian aid convoy to Aleppo shocked the world. It is a sad manifestation of the great danger humanitarian workers are facing in Syria today: caught between the front lines, constantly on the run from shelling, bombing, kidnapping and arrest.
“Our teams had to distribute the aid at night, carrying only two food baskets at a time because there was no fuel for transportation and the shelling made a central distribution too dangerous”, one of our partner organizations, which organized a food distribution in a besieged area some months ago told me. Such situations have become routine for the aid workers on the ground.
Humanitarian workers and their families share the daily struggles of the families they are serving, including displacement, loss of loved ones, hunger and the lack of basic services. “Last winter when the hunger was unbearable, I ventured out to the farmlands. I ran to take a couple of cabbages back to my family. Every second I expected to be hit by a sniper. Because this plantation of cabbages was directly at the front line”. This is the experience of one humanitarian worker in a besieged town in Syria.
On top of their struggles, humanitarian workers are facing intense danger, risking their lives to save the lives of others. Many of the field staff I work with are crossing the front lines on a daily basis, venturing out into conflict zones to reach those most in need and try to accomplish the impossible to get aid and services to the most remote locations.
“In Syria today, carrying humanitarian aid puts you in greater danger than carrying a weapon”, says one of CARE’s partners. Humanitarian aid outside the supervision of the government is forbidden in Syria since 2012, as all aid is channeled through the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and other agencies registered with the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Thus, the work of grassroots humanitarian groups and NGOs, such as our partners, working in opposition-controlled areas is effectively criminalized. Humanitarian workers who carry project documents or cash can be arrested. Having been involved in the Syria response since the beginning of the crisis, I have seen eight partner staff arrested in Syria. While some were lucky enough to escape or to be released after months, others are still in detention or disappeared without a trace.
People delivering humanitarian assistance face the danger of being put on trial before a military tribunal for “funding terrorist activities”. Any assistance to civilian populations in opposition-controlled areas, any services provided to areas outside the government control, is considered by the authorities as an act of resistance, as a tacit support to the opposition. Humanitarian assistance, which follows the principle of impartiality and neutrality, has thus to be delivered in great confidentiality, through secret networks bound together by solidarity. Supplies are smuggled through tunnels and dirt roads, over rivers and on the back of donkeys through rough mountain terrain, in order to reach those communities that are cut off from all basic support.
At the same time, as the level of violence in Syria has exacerbated and the conflict turned more and more into a civil war, an increasing number of armed groups sprung up, marginalizing civil institutions in the opposition-held areas and limiting the space for social and humanitarian activities. Some groups exercise complete surveillance over any humanitarian activity in the areas under its control. This way, they are aiming to influence and shape humanitarian activities in line with their political agenda, setting school curricular, controlling access to health facilities and distribution points. In many of the areas controlled by armed groups, work has become impossible while in other areas, it is a constant struggle. “Our dream is that humanitarian aid workers would enjoy international protection”, said one of our partners, as if this basic demand that is enshrined in International Humanitarian Law is a utopian one.
Using humanitarian access as a weapon of war, the warring parties do not only restrict people’s access to aid, they also directly target humanitarian operations. While the bombing of the trucks on Monday night in Aleppo province constituted the first attack against an official UN convoy, it is sadly not the first time that humanitarian operations came under fire. Medical facilities and schools are a regular target, as are warehouses and distribution points. In June 2016, six health facilities were bombed in a matter of two weeks, according to UNICEF. When the first aid convoy in over a year reached Daraya in June 2016, the town was pounded with barrel bombs for two days, preventing civilians from accessing the distribution point. However, brave humanitarians across Syria do not give up hope. “I am back at work today, where should I be? The children and the families need me,” said a humanitarian volunteer I worked with only one day after their center was attacked by rockets, leaving over 10 civilians dead.
It is CARE’s and our partners’ mandate to continue supporting the heroic efforts of humanitarian organizations in Syria, by providing them with the resources and capacity they need to implement their projects. CARE demands protection for all humanitarian workers and their beneficiaries and calls upon all parties to the conflict to stop attacks against aid organizations as well as indiscriminate attacks against civilians. “Let me be clear: if this week’s callous attack is found to be a deliberate targeting of humanitarians, it would amount to a war crime,” said the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien.
We request immediate and unfettered humanitarian access to all areas under siege and those populations that are marginalized and cut off from basic supplies and services. Our hope is that the ceasefire will be renewed and pave the way for the end of the suffering and a political solution to the conflict. “People in Syria are tired of the fighting, the hunger, the suffering. All they want is an end to the violence”, says one of our Syrian partners.