The political negotiations over Syria, now set to continue next month in Geneva, will be tortuous and lengthy at best, while the Syrian government and certain opposition groups continue to commit horrible abuses against innocent civilians. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing the international community can do in the meantime—especially to ease the plight of civilians suffering at the hands of their own government.
Consider the story of a 76-year-old woman named Zainab, whom I interviewed last month in Damascus. She had just managed to escape from Moadamiya, a suburb that has been under government siege for at least nine months. The conflict in Syria has taken a heavy toll on Zainab’s family, she told me: Government forces detained two of her sons, one of whom died in custody, though she said she believed the other was still alive. Another son and his wife and children were killed in the chemical weapons attack in Ghouta in August.
But on top of its military assault against its own citizens, the Syrian government is also wreaking havoc by cutting off civilians like Zainab from electricity and communications, as well as food, medicine and aid workers, trapping her and several thousand others in Moadamiya for several months. Tired and frail, Zainab told me that she had lost 26 pounds because there was not enough to eat. Doctors in Moadamiya told Human Rights Watch, where I work, that several people, including children, have died of malnutrition. Nobody has been able to verify these claims because the Syrian government bars the entry of all independent observers, including humanitarian organizations. Finally, last month government and opposition fighters negotiated a temporary cease-fire to allow women, children and the elderly—including Zainab—to leave Moadamiya.
The blockade was lifted in Moadamiya, but Syria as a whole is in the midst of a vast humanitarian crisis, with 40 percent—9.3 million—of Syria’s 23 million people in need of assistance, according to the United Nations. The most dire situation is in those areas under siege by opposition or government forces. The United Nations’ humanitarian chief estimated recently that 288,000 people are trapped in areas under government siege in Damascus, the nearby countryside and Homs. For those areas where we have managed to obtain information, Human Rights Watch’s own research confirms that the government places heavy restrictions on humanitarian assistance, inflicting devastating hardships on civilians.
The besieged areas are not the only ones where the Syrian government’s policy is to prevent humanitarian aid from reaching those in need. The government refuses to allow humanitarian organizations to deliver aid via Turkey to opposition-controlled areas in northern Syria. Without Syrian consent, some of the world’s major humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, feel compelled to take unreliable, circuitous routes to reach people in need, sometimes crossing dozens of checkpoints. The United Nations estimates that 2.5 million people are trapped in such “hard-to-access” areas. A recent statement by the Syrian government that it will allow cross-border aid does not apply to the Syria-Turkey border.
Some opposition groups are also part of the problem. Opposition fighters in northern Syria are preventing humanitarian assistance from reaching tens of thousands of people trapped in two Shiite villages just north of the city of Aleppo. Inside the city, which is split between government and opposition control, opposition fighters have from time to time cut off supplies to the government-controlled area. Anti-regime groups have also kidnapped aid workers, including at least three employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross, whom they still hold.
International law is clear on this issue. All parties to a war are required to facilitate humanitarian assistance to civilians in need. And yet the U.N. Security Council, the voice of the international community, was painfully slow to condemn obstacles to the delivery of humanitarian assistance. To its credit, when it did speak on Oct. 2, the Security Council urged the Syrian authorities to take immediate steps to facilitate humanitarian relief operations and lift bureaucratic impediments and other obstacles, including across conflict lines and borders with neighboring countries. Yet the council limited itself to expressing its views in a presidential statement, which has much less weight than a resolution.
International pressure helps. International humanitarian aid workers have told Human Rights Watch that they believe such pressure caused the Syrian government to agree to the Moadamiya evacuation. There are also reports that Syria might be easing some bureaucratic obstacles to aid, including processing outstanding visas for humanitarian aid workers. But apart from the evacuation of Moadamiya, we have seen little progress in easing the siege, and the Syrian government continues to bar aid from Turkey.
There is no time for delay. The fast-approaching winter will make the situation in besieged and hard-to-reach areas even more dire, placing the civilian population in a desperate situation. The U.N. humanitarian chief, Valerie Amos, is set to brief the Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Syria again on Dec. 3, and she is likely to report some progress. But incremental improvements should not distract the Security Council from the underlying humanitarian catastrophe in Syria.
Unless humanitarian organizations are able to access all areas in need by the time of the briefing, the Security Council should show Syria it is serious by adopting a binding resolution to show there will be consequences for defying the council’s authority.
Despite everything, Zainab was lucky she managed to leave Moadamiya. For thousands of others, the imminent onset of winter will make life even harder—and more dangerous. As one local resident told me by phone last week: “We now have one more enemy—the cold. It is a race against time.”
