Sarmada: Hussein al-Naasan struggles to secure water for his family in a scorching summer as aid funds dry up and conditions worsen in impoverished displaced persons camps in rebel-held northwest Syria.
“It’s like they’re trying to kill us slowly,” said the 30-year-old father of two, who has been resettled for more than a decade.
After 13 years of conflict, a lack of international funding has seriously undermined the provision of basic services such as water, waste disposal and sanitation in displaced camps in northwest Syria, according to the United Nations.
More than five million people, most of them displaced, live in areas outside government control in northern and northwestern Syria, the UN says, and many rely on aid to survive.
Residents told AFP there was no tap water available in the camp and aid agencies had stopped importing water, blaming aid budget cuts.
Naasan shares a water tank with three other families to keep costs down.
“It is very difficult for us to secure water that we cannot even afford to buy,” he said.
Cutting access to water could lead to a “big disaster,” Naasan warned as the summer sun beat down on the camp.
He said waste is piling up, increasing the risk of disease in an area with war-torn health facilities.
Syria’s war, which erupted after President Bashar al-Assad cracked down on anti-government protests in 2011, has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and destroyed the country’s infrastructure and industry.
In the northwestern region of Idlib, some 460 displaced camps hosting some 571,000 people have no water, sanitation and hygiene support from UN partner organizations, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told AFP.
“Without an increase in funding, 111 more camps hosting almost 165,000 people will be cut off from such support by the end of September,” the statement warned.
Yet the critical sector is “consistently” neglected, having received only two percent of the necessary funding in the first quarter of 2024, he added.
Camp resident Abdel Karim Ezzeddin, a 45-year-old father of nine, filled plastic barrels with water from a nearby well for his family, grateful to have a truck to transport them.
“How can they stop supplying water in the summer?” he said.
“Do they want us to die?”
David Carden, the UN’s deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for the crisis in Syria, said conditions in the camps in the north-west were “deplorable”.
“Garbage piles up in camps with no hygiene support. Children are sick.”
Response Coordination, an umbrella grassroots organization in northwestern Syria, has warned that skin diseases are spreading in the camps as temperatures rise and water becomes increasingly scarce.
“In some camps, more than 90 percent of residents have scabies,” said Fidaa al-Hamud, a doctor in charge of a mobile clinic near Sarmada, criticizing “the lack of water, the accumulation of garbage… and the lack of sewage networks.” .
Firas Kardush, a local official in the Idlib region, which is ruled by the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, said authorities were “trying to find alternatives” but warned of a “humanitarian disaster” if aid money ran out.
In another camp in rural Idlib, Asma al-Saleh said the lack of water has made it difficult to cook and bathe her five children, and expressed concern because one of them has a rash.
When she runs out of water, she must fill containers at a nearby well and carry them back to her tent.
“We don’t even have cold water to drink” in the summer, she added.
