Syria

Earl of Oxford and Asquith Excerpts

Thursday 29th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Oxford and Asquith (LD)]

My Lords, I also voice my thanks to my noble friend Lord Roberts for securing this debate.

It is no doubt to be expected that many assessments of the provision of humanitarian aid to Syria have been couched in markedly politicised terms. I recently read several of the reports provided over the last few months to or through the UN Security Council, and in respect of many of the statements made in them it is often difficult, perhaps even futile, to form practical judgments, once one has made allowance for what is uncorroborated fact, what is bias, and what is based on flimsy testimony.

However, what seems incontestable is that first, in the villages around eastern Ghouta controlled by the jihadist militants, the plight of Syrian civilians has truly been pitiable. People have been so starved and emaciated that they can barely stand up, and live transmissions show them lying on the grass like weakened animals. Government and militant sources have given different accounts of the circumstances that restricted the movement of aid into Ghouta, but as regards final outcomes it is clear from developments in Aleppo, Homs, Hama and elsewhere that where the Syrian Government have retaken territory from the militants, the Syrian people are returning home in their thousands. According to UNHCR figures, in 2017 nearly half a million Syrians returned to their areas: 444,000 of them internally displaced people and over 30,000 from abroad. ISIL has now withdrawn from the last territory that it controlled near Aleppo city, and the UN’s International Organisation on Migration has seen a large surge of Syrians returning there. No one is claiming that this is the end to their problems—perhaps 40% do not have access to water and healthcare—but it is undoubtedly the case that the Syrian Government are working with the UN and its agencies to facilitate the provision of aid in these liberated areas.

Until recently, the UN assessed that about 95% of all those living in areas where they are trapped by militants are to be found in the Ghouta pocket, but there has also been a recent very large exodus of people, about 150,000 or so, out of the Afrin enclave in the north of the country. They are fleeing the Turkish Army attacks and moving into areas controlled by the Syrian Government. So the longer-term pattern seems quite discernible: where the Government are in charge, the refugees will try to find their way back. What has happened in Aleppo city is therefore likely to happen in Ghouta if the Government are indeed taking back control of the area.

At the moment, there are 27 international non-governmental organisations working in Syria, two international agencies—the International Committee of the Red Cross and ECHO, the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations—and nearly 1,600 local organisations and local charitable institutions. That is a lot of Syrian civil society groups. The other incontestable fact is that enormously significant work is being done by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and the Syria Trust through the partnerships with many INGOs and with the UN. The Syrian Arab Red Crescent accompanies all the UN humanitarian aid columns. It plays a prominent role in rehabilitating infrastructure in the affected areas in order to restore life as much as possible to normality and encourage people to return to their homes. Meanwhile, the Syrian civil society groups that I mentioned earlier are in the lead in providing shelter to the displaced. At the moment, it seems they have insufficient shelters for all those in need and are having to resort to using tents instead. All this activity has little to do with international organisations or the UN; it is strongly driven by the local groups.

As I said, none of this should give any rise to complacency among us, but we should take note of the remarkable dynamism and determination towards self-help and reconstruction within the country itself. It is clear that the Syrians are not going to look for partners in this work from among those who have been involved in creating havoc in the first place. In terms of external involvement, the Indians, the Chinese and maybe the South Africans are going to play greater bilateral roles in rebuilding the country than, for example, Turkey or Saudi Arabia.

International assistance apart, we should note how much the Syrians are doing themselves. In this context, I should like to ask whether the time has not come when we should do more to support the direction of that movement. International aid of course plays a vital role but the Syrians can and are willing to help themselves. Their hospitals are willing to procure and import medical supplies and their municipalities wish to procure and import food supplies. The big obstacle in the way are the sanctions that control the transfer of money payments.

I have raised this question before and the Government’s response has been that there are perfectly satisfactory procedures for hospitals to apply for licences or exemptions from the sanctions regime, yet of those hospitals and surgeries with which I am in contact in Syria I have found none that has been able to avail itself of such a facility. So perhaps the Minister could in due course let us know which hospitals have found a means to obtain such an exemption, or at the very least what contact persons or agencies one can identify to assist them in this procedure. When we are debating the provision of humanitarian aid in Syria, there is something unbalanced if we are unwilling to take a closer look at the way that our own sanctions regime obstructs the procurement by Syrian representatives of their own medical and food supplies through their own resources.