The war in Syria began ten years ago and, with it, a humanitarian crisis whose effects are suffering and even worse today, as proven by successive studies carried out by humanitarian aid organizations.
Below, we review in ten approaches some of the data that reflects how the situation is in Syria and what are the pending challenges:
- More than 380,000 people have died, including about 117,000 civilians – including more than 22,000 children – and 2.1 million have been injured, according to data from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The balances oscillate due to the difficulty to carry out a reliable count.
- As a result of the armed conflict, which shows no signs of a short-term solution, some 13.4 million people need humanitarian aid, according to the latest UN data. They are double that in 2011 and 21 percent more than in 2020.
- The conflict has pushed more than 13 million people out of their homes: some 5.6 million live as refugees in neighboring countries and 6.7 million are internally displaced. Almost half of the displaced have been away from their homes for more than five years and almost four out of ten have had to move more than three times.
- Around 12.4 million Syrians go hungry, some two million of them in extreme conditions. Food insecurity has increased by 30 percent since April 2020 and Action Against Hunger estimates that six out of ten people have difficulty obtaining food, leading to desperate tactics such as reducing rations, borrowing or selling goods. basic.
- Humanitarian organizations are concerned about the effect that inflation has on obtaining food: the price of the basic basket has shot up 236 percent in the last year alone and multiplies by 29 the pre-crisis values. The collapse of the pound in recent months has contributed to the prolonged economic collapse.
- Only 58 percent of hospitals and 53 percent of health centers in Syria work. The UN estimates that more than half of health professionals have left the country and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warns that a clear picture of the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic is lacking.
- The war in Syria has been devastating for children, both physically – nearly 12,000 have been killed or injured, according to UNICEF – and psychologically. More than 5,700 children, some as young as seven years old, have been recruited into the fighting, and nearly 2.45 million children in Syria and another 750,000 in neighboring countries are out of school.
According to a Save the Children study, one in three children would prefer to live in a country other than Syria and, among those living in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and the Netherlands, 86 percent do not want to return to their country of origin. The UN estimates that one million children have been born with their families already living as refugees in the last ten years.
- Before the conflict, 13 percent of Syrian women married as minors, but the figure has doubled to 26 percent. According to a study by the NGO Plan International, it rises to 29 percent if only the refugee women living today in Jordan and Lebanon are taken into account.
- 47 percent of young people between 18 and 25 have suffered the death of a family member or friend, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has conducted interviews in Syria, Lebanon and Germany. One in six indicates that at least one of their parents has died or suffered serious injuries, while 12 percent confirm injuries in their own flesh.
- The war has caused $ 1.2 trillion worth of damage (about one trillion euros) to the Syrian economy. A study by the NGO World Vision and Frontier Economics estimates that, even if the conflict ended today, it would still leave 1.7 trillion dollars (1.4 trillion euros) in additional losses until the year 2035.
The humanitarian appeals of the UN have received in this last decade about 108,000 million dollars, which represents 30 percent of the funds required to help the population.
