Syrian-Kurdish refugees in desperate need of assistance

[Anthea]

Kurds starve as NGOs cut aid

Syrian-Kurdish refugees who have lived for years in the Kurdistan Region’s Basirma Camp are struggling to make ends meet, find employment to support their families, and are in desperate need of aid from humanitarian organizations

Like many other camp residents, Shefi Abdulsalam, an elderly Syrian Kurdish refugee suffers from severe poverty, hardly making ends meet.

Abdulsalam says their financial conditions worsened after most of the aid organizations cut aid.

"I am 2,000,000 dinars in debt. We have been cut off from food and aid. I have no job," the elderly man told Rudaw on Tuesday.

One of Abdulselam's sons lives with special needs and his wife suffers from a chronic illness which requires medication and regular visits to a doctor.

"My son needs at least 150,000 Iraqi dinars per month because he lives with special needs”, he added.

With the Syrian conflict dragging into its 12th year, the work of international organizations has largely come to a standstill.

Though the World Food Program (WFP) supports the camp's residents, WFP funding has significantly decreased since August 2022, according to the organization.

COVID-19 concerns led various organizations responsible for providing critical goods and services to refugees and IDPs to slow down or completely halt their operations.

Decreased funding from donors has led local and international organizations to dedicate their limited resources to dire humanitarian situations.

As a result, those considered to be living in relatively stable conditions are receiving less assistance.

Mahir Abdulkarim who owns a mini market at the camp claims that their financial situation has never been as dire as they currently are.

He says most of the refugees are destitute and he has so far loaned 35,000,000 dinars worth of goods and items to the camp residents as they cannot afford to pay.

When he was 10, Khalil Hemo, who is expected to soon become the father of a third child, lost his arms in an incident, making him unable to work. Given the financial crisis in his hometown of Qamishli, he moved to the Kurdistan Region in 2018 where he resides at Basirma camp.

"We used to borrow items from shops and later pay. We used to say that when the food money comes [from WFP and humanitarian organizations], we would pay back our debt, but now our food supply has been cut and now we cannot borrow goods," Hemo said.

According to official data Rudaw received from the WFP, they had been giving aid to more than 14,000 refugee and IDP families until August 2022. Since September, they cut their assistance by half.

The WFP says they have so far spent 11.3 million dollars on 10 camps housing Syrian refugees in the Kurdistan Region.

A WFP official told Rudaw that they cannot provide aid to every refugee family, and prioritize based on who they consider needs it more, based on evaluations and assessments.

"After corona[virus] ended, we once again reduced aid from 70 to 35 percent. This is unfair to give aid to everyone in the same way," Saman Ahmed, a WFP official said, adding "when a woman has four children and her children are aged below five and they have no breadwinner and maybe they have members who live with chronic diseases, they deserve to be assisted."

The Syrian conflict has displaced over 240,000 Syrians of Kurdish origin to the Kurdistan Region.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/people-places/26012023