UN refugee agency forced to make cuts as Syrians try to return home, top official says
With governments around the globe diverting money from aid to security and defence, the UNHCR is having to make cuts in the Middle East, including in Lebanon where it has stopped providing educational services to refugee children.
A 'historic opportunity for people to stop being refugees unfortunately comes at the same time that we've had a dramatic series of cuts to the humanitarian aid system around the world,' said Rema Jamous Imseis, the Middle East and North Africa regional director for the UNHCR.
She told reporters in Washington that Syria and the region are at a 'pivotal moment' and called on the US government to provide additional support for refugee assistance, and to countries that are hosting large numbers of Syrians.
The agency said it urgently needs at least $370 million to fund programmes for the return and reintegration of Syrians, and another $575 million for this year's return support plan.
More than two million Syrians have returned home since the end of the civil war in December, including 650,000 refugees and more than 1.5 million internally displaced people.
Refugees returning to Syria face enormous challenges. About 80 per cent of homes are either fully or partially destroyed, according to the UNHCR.
'The basic necessities of life simply don't exist,' Ms Jamous Imseis said. 'We need the international community support to help reinforce and consolidate what's there and further expand to meet the needs of all of these people who want to return home.'
Syria is undergoing new turmoil that threatens the promise of stability by the new government of President Ahmad Al Shara. Israel bombed Damascus on Wednesday in response to Syrian attacks on the Druze minority community in the south.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Middle East Eye
36 minutes ago
- Middle East Eye
War on Gaza 'must end now' say UK, France and 23 other countries
A group of 25 countries, including France and the United Kingdom, have called on Israel to end its 21-month war on Gaza and said the suffering of ordinary Palestinians had "reached new depths". "We urge the parties and the international community to unite in a common effort to bring this terrible conflict to an end, through an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire," the countries said in a joint statement on Monday. "Further bloodshed serves no purpose. We reaffirm our complete support to the efforts of the US, Qatar and Egypt to achieve this." The signatories, which included several EU countries except Germany, added that they were "prepared to take further action to support an immediate ceasefire". The statement also branded the controversial Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) as "dangerous" and said it deprives Palestinians of "human dignity". New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters "We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food," the statement said. "The Israeli government's denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable," it added, urging Israel to "comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law." The United Nations has called the GHF's aid model "inherently unsafe" and in breach of impartial humanitarian principles. The foundation, which began operations in late May following an 11-week Israeli blockade, uses private US mercenaries for delivery. It bypasses the UN-led aid system, which Israel claims has been infiltrated by Hamas - an accusation that is not supported by independently verified evidence. Israel bombs nursery Monday's call for Israel to end its war came on the same day that it bombed one of the last remaining nurseries in central Gaza. Videos seen by Middle East Eye showed children, many of whom were wearing their rucksacks, soaked in blood and screaming for help from teachers and passersby. Children in Gaza die as David Lammy says UK is 'happy to do more' to help Read More » The situation in Gaza has continued to deteriorate in recent days, and on Sunday, the World Food Programme (WFP) said that "Gaza's hunger crisis has reached new levels of desperation". "People are dying from lack of humanitarian assistance," the WFP said in a statement. "Malnutrition is surging, with 90,000 women and children in urgent need of treatment. Nearly one person in three is not eating for days." Gaza's Ministry of Health echoed that warning, saying that at least 19 Palestinians died of hunger on Sunday and hundreds more were suffering from malnutrition and could die soon. "We warn that hundreds of people whose bodies have wasted away are at risk of imminent death due to hunger,' a spokesperson for the ministry said. The ministry added that at least 71 children had died of malnutrition since the war began in 2023, while 60,000 others show signs of severe undernourishment. Hamas offer to release all captives Last week, the official spokesperson for Hamas's armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said that the Palestinian group had repeatedly offered to release all the captives held in Gaza at once, as part of a comprehensive ceasefire deal, but Israel rejected the offer. Abu Obaida said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet "rejected" the offer and were "not interested in the fate of their soldiers," he said, accusing the Israeli leadership of preparing the public for the possibility that all the captives will die. Earlier in the week, sources had told MEE that the families of Israeli captives held in Gaza had reached out to Hamas through a representative to ask about the fate of the ceasefire talks. The sources said that the representative had reached out to Hamas after the captives' families feared Netanyahu was trying to torpedo a possible deal. Hamas and Israel reached a brief three-stage ceasefire in January, but the deal collapsed in March after Israel took back several of its captives and resumed bombing Gaza, walking away from the deal before talks with Hamas on a permanent end to the war could start. Since then, the Trump administration has given Israel full backing to wage war on the enclave. Israel has relentlessly bombed the besieged Gaza Strip since the 7 October 2023 attacks on southern Israel, displacing the entire 2.3 million population multiple times, and has killed more than 58,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
The National
an hour ago
- The National
Aid pressure mounts on Israel as nations warn Gaza's suffering has 'reached new depths'
The suffering of Gaza 's people has 'reached new depths', more than two dozen countries warned on Monday as pressure mounted on Israel to stop its 'drip-feeding of aid' to the strip. Britain and France were among 25 countries to say Israel's aid policy is 'dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity', in some of their strongest language yet. Israel dismissed their criticism as 'disconnected from reality'. Sources told The National that the US and several Arab allies were in talks on organising direct airdrops into Gaza to ease a worsening hunger crisis in the strip, whose land borders are tightly controlled by Israel. The sources said the talks began on Sunday in Cairo and Doha between representatives of Israel on one side and those of the US, Egypt, Qatar and Jordan on the other. Several countries carried out airdrops in 2023 and last year. A UAE aid ship carrying more than 7,000 tonnes of supplies meanwhile left Khalifa Port in Abu Dhabi on Monday to deliver supplies for Gaza. The largest aid vessel to be sent by the Emirates so far, it is carrying food, shelter materials and medical and health supplies, state news agency Wam reported. Expected to arrive in the next two weeks, the ship is also carrying a fully equipped field hospital that can accommodate 400 patients and 16 ambulances, Hamoud Al Efari, the UAE Aid mission's co-ordinator, told The National. Adding to the pressure for more aid, Pope Leo XIV spoke of the 'urgent need to provide assistance' in his first call since taking office with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the Vatican said. Their conversation came days after three people were killed when an Israeli strike hit Gaza's only Catholic church. Israel has allowed only sporadic aid deliveries into Gaza since ending a two-month ceasefire in March. In one incident on Sunday, Gaza officials said 93 people were killed after hungry civilians surrounded a World Food Programme convoy carrying flour. Israel was accused on Monday of firing at civilians with their hands raised near the aid convoy, in the bloodiest incident yet involving aid delivery. 'Gunfire erupted from all directions,' recalled one witness, Musab Abu Omer. Five more people were reported killed while waiting for aid in Gaza on Monday, as Israel expanded its offensive into the city of Deir Al Balah – which had been spared major ground assaults in the previous 21 months of war. Aid workers have warned of a risk of famine in the enclave. The secretary general of the Gulf Co-operation Council, Jassim Al Budaiwi, called on the international community to 'to take immediate and serious action to end this brutal siege'. He said the Gulf states condemned the 'continued unjust, inhumane and illegal blockade' by Israeli forces. The joint statement by 25 mainly European countries, who also include Australia, Canada and Japan, called it 'horrifying' that more than 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid. 'The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths. The Israeli government's aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity,' they said. 'We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.' Israel retorted that Hamas was to blame for starting the war and failing to release Israeli hostages, as talks approach a dead end on a ceasefire proposal by the US, Qatar and Egypt. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said the 25-country statement was 'disconnected from reality'. 'Hamas is the sole party responsible for the continuation of the war and the suffering on both sides,' it said. 'At these sensitive moments in the ongoing negotiations, it is better to avoid statements of this kind.' The Israeli army has reportedly proposed seizing yet more of Gaza, where it already claims control of about 75 per cent of the strip's territory, to put pressure on Hamas in the ceasefire talks between both sides falter. Israeli outlet Channel 12 said its sources described the plan as one for 'taking over Gaza'.
The National
an hour ago
- The National
Syria's Druze count the toll of another deadly episode in long struggle for survival
The once invincible Sweida in southern Syria, the epicentre of a revolt against French colonial rule, was counting its dead on Monday after a week of fighting that left its mostly Druze inhabitants bowed, but not defeated. A ceasefire appeared to hold as Monday was the first day without clashes in a week. Authorities were moving Bedouin civilians out, but aid convoys were still to enter. Local branches of the Health Ministry sent teams to count the dead and take bodies to hospitals, where mortuaries were full after three waves of incursions by government forces and auxiliaries in the past week. Last year, Sweida was a centre of a non-violent uprising against the Assad regime when peaceful protest in Syria had long been crushed. The Druze are an offshoot of Islam, whose history is defined by struggles for survival. US diplomatic pressure on Syrian authorities, and Israeli raids, halted the offensive on Sunday. However the area, comprising the heartland of the ancient sect, remains under siege by the central authorities. Damascus said Druze militias killed hundreds of Sunnis in Sweida during the clashes in the provincial capital, which were sparked by sectarian abductions. Khaldoun, a Druze surgeon at the main Sweida National Hospital, told The National Syrian military and Interior Ministry forces who arrived in the city last week 'supposedly to stop clashes and spread security, turned out to be monsters.' Women were among dead, felled by snipers and other government triggermen. Dr Khaldoun said 'medical teams were shot dead while trying to save people.' He said at least the bodies of 500 people have been brought to the hospital or died while receiving treatment there since government attacks on Sweida began. Jiryes al Ishaq, a Christian who lived on a farmland on the western outskirts of Sweida, said he fled the government advance to the Greek Orthodox parish in the centre of the city. 'Pillage has been widespread but I don't know what happened to my land,' he said. 'We are provided for at the parish, because the authorities have vowed not to harm [the compound], but the rest of the city is devastated,' he said, pointing out unconfirmed reports that government militants had killed a Christian family of a dozen members in Sweida. The government had said during the offensive that killings would result in prosecutions. Fighting in Sweida - in pictures Sweida, with its basalt rock landscape, is home to 270,000 Druze who comprise most members of the sect left in Syria after waves of migration, particularly during the 2011 to 2024 civil war. There are an estimated one million Druze worldwide, mainly in Syria, Lebanon, Israel and a diaspora in Latin America. From 1925 to 1927, the Druze, led by Sultan Basha Al Atrash, mounted a revolt against French rule. The revolt failed but it was instrumental in projecting the image of the Druze as being Syrians first in a predominantly Sunni country. Sultan Al Atrash became a figure in the narrative of Arab nationalists across the Middle East. Bedouin tribes, some of whom have been attacking Sweida, had joined him in the revolt. Sunni merchants in Damascus, who later supported former leader Bashar Al Assad and the post Assad order, financed the Druze armed struggle against the French as thousands of Druze fighters were killed with superior French firepower. Sultan Al Atrash died in 1982. However, one of his daughters, Muntaha, led peaceful resistance in Sweida when the March 2011 protest movement broke out. In the last 15 months of Mr Al Assad's rule, Sweida renewed the civil disobedience movement demanding the removal of the regime. Among its leaders was Sheikh Hikmat Al Hijri, the most senior of a triumvirate comprising the Druze spiritual leadership. Suhail Tebian, a prominent Druze civil figure who had opposed an increased arming of the Druze under Mr Al Hijri since the regime fell, said the community has had no choice but to resist government forces comprising religious extremists, although the cost has been high. 'Sweida has become a disaster zone,' Mr Thebian said. There is nothing more I can tell you. I have survived, for now'. Mr Al Hijri resisted attempts by the new authorities – formerly Hayat Tahrir Al Sham – to control Sweida, saying that new security forces should be drawn from residents of the province. He labelled the government as extremists and undemocratic, pointing out the lack of any independent branches in the new political system. So, when clashes began in Sweida last week between Druze and Sunni residents of Bedouin origins, Mr Al Hijri refused government security forces in the city. This set the scene for a week of incursions in which the government recruited rural Sunnis on its side, from Sweida and nearby Deraa. The authorities also taken by bus in more Sunnis, this time Bedouin, from the province of Deir Ezzor, in the eastern fringes of Syria, and from the governorate of Aleppo. But even Druze who have been critical of Mr Al Hijri's handling of the crisis said the blood shed by the government forces and its auxiliaries have robbed it of credibility. 'They have cut the internet to make it difficult to know and document the size of the atrocities they committed,' said Nawaf, another Druze doctor. An engineer in Sweida said the city and nearby villages 'have been devastated'. 'We can't even reach them,' he said. 'Bodies are still lying in open fields. There is no [transport] vehicles. No gasoline. I went to see the [main] hospital, it can't receive anyone. It is out of service.'
