The reduction in access and the volatility of the conflict have made the delivery of immediate aid — and longer-term development work— an ongoing challenge for organizations like Mercy Corps. Navigating around the crisis and reaching those in need with uninterrupted, lifesaving aid requires innovative solutions.
With so many unknowns and uncertainties, our team members are working to help community members to be able to continue to provide support, with or without our presence on the ground. Read our NGO joint statement on the impacts of limited access. Mercy Corps is working hard to relieve the intense suffering of civilians inside Syria, as well as that of refugees who sought safety in neighboring countries.
We are delivering food and clean water, restoring sanitation systems, improving shelters and providing families with clothing, mattresses and other household essentials. We are helping children cope with extreme stress and leading constructive activities to nurture their healthy development, while helping host communities and refugees work together to mitigate tensions and find solutions to limited resources.
We are also supporting livelihood development through the distribution of items like seeds and tools and facilitation of cash grants and business courses. More than This includes about 5. Every year of the conflict has seen an exponential growth in refugees. In July , there were , refugees. One year later, there were 1. That tripled by the end of Today there are 5. It's the worst exodus since the Rwandan genocide 27 years ago. More than 6. They live in informal settlements, crowded in with extended family or sheltering in damaged or abandoned buildings.
Some people survived the horrors of multiple displacements, besiegement, hunger and disease and fled to areas where they thought they would be safe, only to find themselves caught up in the crossfire once again. Around 6. More than 1. Nearly 3. The short answer: no. Most Syrian refugee families are struggling to settle in unfamiliar urban communities or have been forced into informal rural environments. They seek shelter in unfinished buildings, sometimes without proper kitchens or bathrooms, or stay in public buildings like schools or mosques.
Others stay with relatives, sometimes even strangers, who welcome them in to their homes. Azraq, a camp opened in April , is carefully designed to provide a sense of community and security, with steel caravans instead of tents, a camp supermarket and organized "streets" and "villages. But many families feel trapped, crowded and even farther from any sense of home, so they seek shelter in nearby towns.
Iraq has set up a few camps to house the influx of refugees who arrived in , but the majority of families are living in urban areas. And in Lebanon, the government has no official camps for refugees, so families establish makeshift camps or find shelter in derelict, abandoned buildings.
In Turkey, the majority of refugees are trying to survive and find work, despite the language barrier, in urban communities. Some Syrians know people in neighboring countries who they can stay with. But many host families were already struggling on meager incomes and do not have the room or finances to help as the crisis drags on. Refugees find shelter wherever they can. Our teams have seen families living in rooms with no heat or running water, in abandoned chicken coops and in storage sheds.
Refugees often land in host countries without all their identification, which has either been destroyed or left behind. Without the right documents in host countries, refugees can be evicted from housing, be unable to access medical care, education or most often, just be afraid to leave their homes. Without these documents, we see many refugees resort to negative coping strategies, including child labor, early marriage and engagement in unsafe work.
The lack of clean water and sanitation in crowded, makeshift settlements is an urgent concern. But knowledgeable voices, especially at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace , put this mess in perspective while offering a way forward. His Russian and Iranian allies saved him from toppling by rebels, and the regime now holds more than 60 percent of the country. No one, not even Trump, believes it wise to try to reverse that situation with a U. Yes, Putin is an anti-American autocrat who now has notched a geopolitical victory.
David Petraeus told NPR. What we were doing was not fighting on the front lines — we were enabling those who were doing that," namely Kurdish-supported fighters.
At the height of the former conflict, the Marines alone had 20, troops in the country. For 10 years, Syria has been convulsed by war. Back in , what began as political protests quickly escalated to deadly conflict.
A decade later, the humanitarian toll is devastating. This is the biggest displacement crisis of the century. Many of those who have been uprooted are still displaced today. In Washokani, both those discharged from care and those who can self-isolate at home with mild illness are supported with hygiene material and health education.
We identify vulnerable people in their household, offer self-protection advice, follow up with their household contacts, and review their health status at regular intervals for a month.
We increased our support in Raqqa with a focus on protecting health care workers, improving IPC in primary and secondary health care facilities, improving triage and care for suspect patients requiring inpatient care while they await test results, and sharing lessons learned from our Washokani response with Raqqa health organizations.
PCR testing remains limited in the region with no supply pipelines secured at the moment. The average number of tests per day has declined to a very low level, making it difficult to determine the scale of the outbreak. Across Al Hol camp, our teams continue to follow up with the 1, people who have been identified as particularly vulnerable to developing severe symptoms if they contract COVID, and support them based on individual needs.
Many of the identified people have noncommunicable diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension, asthma, or heart conditions. We are working in three recently opened COVID treatment centers in the regions, with capacities of 31 beds, 34 beds in Afrin, and 28 beds in Al-Bab. In the centers, we treat patients with mild, moderate, and severe symptoms, providing oxygen support to those patients who need it. In the camps where we work in northwest Syria, our teams are still spreading awareness messages about COVID and distributing hygiene kits to the families.
In Syria, civilian areas and infrastructure, including medical facilities, came under direct fire again in Thousands of people were killed or wounded, and many more driven from their homes. In areas where access could be negotiated, our teams ran or supported hospitals and health centers and provided health care in displacement camps, following independent evaluations to determine medical needs. Learn how you can best help in Syria and other countries.
In northwest Syria, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced as a consequence of the offensive launched by the Syrian government forces and their allies, notably Russia, in Idlib province, the last opposition stronghold, in April Most newly displaced people headed for densely populated areas where no clean water or medical care was available. They had few options, as most areas that were considered relatively safe were overcrowded and overstretched in terms of humanitarian assistance.
Schools, hospitals, markets, and camps for internally displaced people were also hit and damaged during the offensive. On multiple occasions, most notably in August and from late October, medical teams at MSF-supported hospitals had to deal with mass-casualty influxes , with 10 or more wounded people arriving at once.
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