Syria

USAID is providing humanitarian aid to more than 5 million Syrians each month.

Zein Al Rifa, AFP

Key Developments

Humanitarian actors, including U.S. Government partners, continue to address COVID-19 concerns in Syria by adapting existing programming to mitigate and respond to COVID-19 transmission. Relief organizations continue to deliver food, health, protection, shelter, and water, sanitation, and hygiene assistance, supporting vulnerable populations despite COVID-19-related restrictions. On June 30, during the fourth annual Brussels Conference on Supporting Syria and the Region, U.S. Special Representative for Syria Engagement Ambassador James F. Jeffrey announced nearly $700 million in additional humanitarian assistance for the Syria crisis. The funding will support the provision of emergency food, health, livelihoods, shelter, and water, sanitation, and hygiene services for internally displaced persons and other vulnerable populations in Syria and Syrian refugees in the region. Since the start of the crisis in 2012, the United States has provided more than $11.3 billion in humanitarian assistance to help Syrians in need.

UN Security Council Resolution 2504—which reauthorized UN cross-border humanitarian access to northwest Syria from Turkey but did not reauthorize access to northeast Syria from Iraq—is set to expire on July 10, jeopardizing access to UN humanitarian goods and services for approximately 2.8 million people in the northwest. The United States and other relief actors are calling for the renewal of the authorization, as well as the reauthorization of UN access to northeast Syria from Iraq, to continue the delivery of life-saving assistance to millions of people.

Despite ongoing provision of large-scale relief assistance in Syria, humanitarian conditions continue to deteriorate due to the effects of protracted conflict and prolonged large-scale internal displacement, combined with a months-long economic crisis involving the steep devaluation of the Syrian Pound. As a result, in recent months, relief actors have observed rising malnutrition levels in northwest Syria and heightened food security concerns countrywide, with the UN estimating that 9.3 million people were food-insecure as of April.

Background

The Syrian conflict is the largest and most complex humanitarian crisis of our time, driving record levels of displacement. Nearly 12 million people are displaced within Syria or have fled to neighboring countries. Approximately 60% of the current population—or 11.7 million people—are in need of humanitarian aid. The emergence of ISIS exacerbated the protracted crisis, where the Assad regime has waged an unrelenting campaign of bloodshed and violence against its own people for more than eight years.