Displaced Syrians fear hunger one month after UN failure to renew lifeline aid route

Residents of a camp for internally displaced people (IDP) in rebel-held northwestern Syria have expressed fears over worsening living conditions after the UN failed to renew a cross-border mechanism to allow international aid to reach the area.

Some of the camp's residents told The New Arab's Arabic-language sister site Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the UN was responsible for their plight. 

A UN resolution allowed aid to cross via the Bab Al-Hawa crossing expired almost a month ago and camp residents feel there is no solution in sight.

They also blamed the Syrian regime, which they said had forced them into displacement and aid dependency.

More than four million people live in rebel-held areas of northern and northwestern Syria, many of them in overcrowded camps where they are in desperate need of aid.

"In the past, I used to work in agriculture. We never faced hunger," said Mohammed Al-Omari, who currently lives in Idlib province's Mashhad Ruhin camp.

"My house was on the outskirts of Maarat al-Numan, and we had a large orchard that fed more than 40 people in our family. We grew all kinds of vegetables and sold them in the market. Our financial situation was very good, and we never needed anyone's help nor did we ask for assistance."

Al-Omari said his family fled to northwestern Idlib in 2019, when they left the destroyed city of Maarat Al-Numan, which fell to regime forces that year.

"We ended up in the Mashhad Ruhin camp after selling everything we had just to be able to live without needing anyone's help," he said.

"The reality of the displaced in the Mashhad Ruhin camp is extremely dire," he said. "We are six siblings, and each of my brothers has at least four children.

"There are no job opportunities at all. Sometimes we work as day labourers, but the daily wages do not exceed 50 Turkish lira, which only covers the cost of a loaf of bread," he said.

"In the past, we received some aid from humanitarian organisations, but after aid stopped, the situation became catastrophic."

Since 2014, the UN has delivered relief to opposition-held areas of Syria, without the permission of the Assad regime, directly through the Bab al-Hawa crossing from Turkey.

But last month, the UN Security Council failed to reach a consensus on extending the key aid route. Russia vetoed a nine-month extension then failed to muster enough votes to adopt a six-month extension.

Following the 6 February earthquakes that struck both Turkey and Syria, the Assad regime agreed to temporarily open two other crossings on the border until 13 August.

But several international organisations have expressed concern that allowing the regime control over the flow of aid to rebel-held areas could limit access to those most in need.

Khidr Al-Obaid, an activist, told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that people were living on whatever "remained in the warehouses of the World Food Program and other humanitarian organisations", adding that would run out by the end of August.

"The situation is extremely bad, and the residents are genuinely anxious and afraid of being completely deprived of humanitarian aid."

The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) medical charity also described the situation as "simply deplorable".

"Humanitarian aid has been used as a tool in a political dispute and struggling people in northwestern Syria will pay the price for this failure," MSF head Sebastien Gay said in a press statement issued on Tuesday.

"The bottom line is that the needs of over four million people have been overlooked, as political negotiations were priorities."

The conflict in Syria began after President Bashar al-Assad's regime brutally suppressed peaceful protests in 2011. Over half a million people have been killed and millions more have been driven from their homes, mostly as a result of regime bombardment of civilian areas.