Richard Gowan :
Wherever you look these days, unhappy regional powers and even some weak states are demonstrating a startling degree of contempt for the supposed masters of the international system. In the past two weeks, Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies have precipitated a crisis with Iran that threatens to wreck the U.S. opening to Tehran, while North Korea has infuriated China with its so-called hydrogen bomb test. In Africa, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, once a darling of aid donors, has declared that he will run for a third term in office, having already revised the country’s constitution to eliminate its erstwhile two-term limit. Inside the European Union, the highly conservative new Polish government has triggered a public showdown with Brussels by imposing political appointees on the nation’s Constitutional Court and state-run media organizations.
Although disconnected and very different, these events point to a growing and destabilizing dissipation of the major powers’ grip on global affairs. Washington has called on the Saudis to show restraint and expressed disappointment with Kagame, but its options are limited. Beijing joined the rest of the United Nations Security Council in condemning North Korea, but it is not clear how far it will go in disciplining its perennially uppity neighbor. The European Commission will monitor the rule of law in Poland, but stopped short of threatening Warsaw with harsh penalties such as suspending its EU Council voting rights.
Richard Gowan is an associate fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and nonresident fellow at NYU’s Center on International Cooperation, where he was previously research director. He also teaches at Columbia University.
NGOs are attempting to provide jobs but immediate humanitarian needs are overwhelming moves towards longer term solutions for people in Syria Syrian Red Crescent ambulances transport people from Idlib province towards the Turkish border.
Syrian Red Crescent ambulances transport people from Idlib province towards the Turkish border. Photograph: Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images Given the brutality that has come to characterise Syria’s four-year war, it is understandable that discussion of the conflict has focused on violent deaths. But there is another scourge destroying lives in the country: economic ruin and crippling poverty – what a UN-backed report (pdf) called “an equally horrendous but silent disaster”.
Some aid organisations and policy experts are finding that, with more than four out of five Syrians in poverty, traditional humanitarian aid, while necessary, just isn’t enough. So they’re advocating for, and implementing, livelihood projects – intervention to assist people’s abilities to support themselves.
One of these is the Danish Refugee Council (DRC). As Peter Klanso, DRC’s Middle East and north Africa director, told Irin: “You cannot have an entire population that is dependent on humanitarian aid. That doesn’t make any sense.”
In the country’s north-east, once known as Syria’s breadbasket, agricultural production has dropped sharply, and farmers have been battered from all sides.
Displacement caused by shifting frontlines has resulted in missed harvest and planting seasons – 6.6 million Syrians have been internally displaced by the violence inside their country. People who returned to areas vacated by the so-called Islamic State (Isis), for example, have come home to neglected soil and can’t afford seeds.
Government agricultural subsidies have reduced or, in some areas, disappeared. Before the conflict, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad was the primary purchaser of wheat and maize; it still buys these products in some places, but on a far smaller scale. Research by a major NGO working in north-east Syria – shared with Irin on the condition the charity not be named for the safety of its staff – found that a flood of in-kind aid has resulted in a fall in demand for agricultural products.
This is not a region always hardest hit by violence, but many are heavily in debt and selling all they have to feed their children. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) told Irin that 70%-90% of those it polled in northern Syria in July admitted to spending more than they earn each week.
Traditional humanitarian assistance such as food, sanitation and medicine remains vital – 13.5 million Syrians need it, by the UN’s count. But some Syrians have been asking aid organisations for something different. “[Syrians] were requesting support with farming … something more productive than just being given food parcels,” said one aid worker based in north-east Syria, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
To that end, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) funds projects including agricultural support, as does the IRC, which in the summer gave 2,667 vouchers to 863 households for seeds, fertilisers and tools to sustain small-scale farms. IRC also runs training programmes and apprenticeships for young people, while the British Red Cross supports carpet manufacturers and the DRC assists small business owners.
The Syrian Red Crescent has been helping people in Homs to start over, although few shops have reopened. The DRC runs programmes from Damascus, Homs and Deraa – it gives grants as well as providing training and market analysis for small businesses. “In every war situation, no matter how cruel it is – and certainly the one in Syria is very cruel – there are always people who are living and trying to make a normal life,” Klanso said.
Supporting jobs is not viable in all areas – particularly those under Isis control or where battles are ongoing. Solidarités International found that while the need for such programmes in northern Syria was greatest in Aleppo, the security situation meant that their recent cash-for-work project was restricted to the countryside.
One benefit of livelihood aid is its long-term potential, an attraction for those Syrians who have come to see the intractable conflict as normal. Eva Svoboda, research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, has been studying Syria since the conflict began. “People we spoke to in 2011 [and] 2012 still expressed some hope [for] an end to the conflict,” said Svoboda. “This has now changed to sheer desperation.”
Rim Turkmani, research fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE), believes livelihood support is essential to weaken the war economy. Her research shows that, in opposition-controlled areas, many are joining armed groups because they offer the only opportunity to earn a salary. “There is a lot to do against Isis that is more serious and effective than airstrikes,” she said.
Despite the hype behind it in policy circles, there are limits to how much aid organisations can, and want, to fund job growth in a war zone. “The reality is that 95% of [our] funds go directly to in-kind support,” the FAO coordinator for food security in Syria told LSE researchers for a report (pdf) published last year. “Impact for such programmes is not immediate, humanitarian needs are overwhelming and it is more difficult to run such projects rather than providing food,” he wrote.
Analysis Impunity in conflict has cast a dark shadow over aid work in 2015 As political and development agendas overlap, there is a greater need than ever for a clear commitment to the principles of international humanitarian law.
Ocha, the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, reported that in September only about 11,700 people in Syria received livelihood support, whereas nearly 5.9 million collected food aid.
Penny Sims, senior media officer at the British Red Cross, said humanitarian work must remain the priority. “We are doing some livelihoods work, but the situation in Syria is still very much an emergency,” she said. “Immediate relief is still our main work … food, water and healthcare are still the most important.”
With the UN’s appeals for aid to the Syria crisis critically underfunded – there is a shortfall of 47% – little is left for livelihood projects. Kathryn Striffolino, advocacy adviser at the IRC, said: “There is a finite amount of assistance/resources available, and so many different, frankly competing, humanitarian needs.”
Aid agencies are also constrained by access. “You can’t successfully implement quality livelihoods programming when there are bombs dropping from the sky or bullets flying,” said Striffolino. “How can we understand how markets are reacting and run livelihood programmes when we don’t have direct access to communities?” another aid worker said.
Yet for those not directly impacted by violence, life is going on, said one aid worker, who had recently encountered a man transporting 5,000 chickens out of Aleppo to start a poultry business. “Even in Syria, people are trying to cope.”
—The Guardian
