Northwest Syria (NWS) is currently facing unprecedented humanitarian needs and a deteriorating economic situation – further compounded by the impacts of two large earthquakes that occurred in February.
On Tuesday 11 July, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) failed to renew an extension of the cross-border aid mechanism that granted the United Nations permission to deliver aid to Northwest Syria (NWS) through the Bab al-Hawa crossing from neighbouring Türkiye. Since 2014, this cross-border mechanism has enabled UN agencies to provide vital humanitarian assistance to millions of people in need across the opposition-controlled region. Without the renewed resolution, the UN will only be able to bring physical aid into NWS through ‘crossline’ deliveries through Government of Syria (GoS) areas.
UN representatives have repeatedly stressed crossline aid is no substitute for the scale at which cross-border aid is delivered. As such, removal of the cross-border aid channel threatens access to food, medical care, vaccines, clean water, shelter, and protection services for 2.7 million people on a monthly basis . IMPACT – through its initiative REACH – conducted analysis of key market dynamics to provide a better understanding of the impacts and inform response actors as they seek ways to mitigate them, which are summarised in an advocacy brief .
This brief highlights that the withdrawal of UN cross-border humanitarian assistance will result in the need to scale up cash assistance to meet the needs of those previously receiving in-kind aid. Cash assistance is an effective alternative, as it allows households to prioritise their own competing needs, and REACH market monitoring data has indicated capacity to absorb increased cash flows. However, markets will likely struggle to meet the scale of increased demand from a rapid shift to cash programming and local procurement for humanitarian programming. Such a shift would require complementary support to livelihoods and businesses, supply chains, and local production.
For example, the UN cross-border response supports certain sectors that will not be able to be covered by this support, as local production and local aid actors will struggle to import goods commercially at such a scale to meet needs. This is likely to most heavily impact health services and the provision of life-saving medicines that cannot be procured locally. These potential shortages of medicines could limit the effectiveness of multi-purpose cash assistance programs and have critical implications for the cholera response.
It will be crucial to continue monitoring the situation following the UNSC decision, while maintaining humanitarian assistance and increasing support for a cash response – complemented with other livelihoods and market-based programming to gradually decrease the need at such a scale and build resilience in the medium to long term. Read the complete advocacy brief here .