Perfect storm? Syrian humanitarian crises

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Professor John Beddington (UKs chief scientific/2009) warned that the world was heading for major upheavals with a "perfect storm" of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources that threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration as people flee from the worst-affected regions.

The media saturation of the humanitarian crises and the political debate has obviously overtaken the events spoken about in 2009. Behind this immense displacement of people we are witnessing a story of immeasurable and extended human suffering and loss.

In 2013 we reported on Oxfam’s work in Syria. There is now a second call for assistance for the biggest movement of people since the Second World War. Oxfam’s appeal focusses mainly on the refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and across conflict lines in Syria. Due to their humanitarian crises expertise relief work is also being undertaken with refugees in Italy and Sicily.

The online donation link is https://www.ammado.com/community/159424

Compounded suffering

Prior to the outbreak of violent conflict, Syria had been affected by four consecutive years of drought in the north eastern part of the country, particularly in Al-Hasakeh, Deir Ezzor and Al-Raqqa.

Crop failures and permanently affected water sources had already taken its toll on 1.3 million people with nearly 800,000 losing their livelihoods. Thousands migrated from the north-eastern areas and moved to informal settlements or camps close to Damascus.

A top United Nations official (Olivier de Schutter, UN special rapporteur on the right to food) warned in 2010 that Syria's drought was affecting food security and had already pushed nearly 3 million people into extreme poverty.

The severity of the 2006 to 2010 drought, and more importantly the failure of Bashar al-Assad’s regime to prepare, or respond to it effectively, exacerbated other tensions, from unemployment to corruption and inequality, which erupted in the wake of the Arab spring revolutions.

Francesca de Châtel at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, points out that rural community had been left disenfranchised and disaffected from 50 years of policies that exploited and mismanaged Syrian resources.

The link between climate change and conflict has been debated for years. A working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrote in 2014 that there was “justifiable common concern” that climate change increased the risk of armed conflict in certain circumstances, but said it was unclear how strong the effect was.