Author: Mona A works for a Syrian national NGO that works in North West Syria and neighboring countries. Names are withheld for reasons of risk management. 

On 14th to 15th June, donor governments, UN agencies, international NGOs and local NGOs involved in the Syrian regional crisis response meet for the Brussels 7 Conference on ‘Supporting the future of Syria and the region.’ The national refugee-led organization that I work for works inside Syria supporting networks of grassroots community groups, including women-led organisations, as well as delivering programmes to assist and protect Syrian communities. This blog outlines three priority messages for decision-makers and civil society partners at the Conference:

The earthquake and after-shocks have exacerbated the multi-layered suffering of Syrian people, but they are also organizing to survive and help each other.  

After 12 years of conflict, the earthquake on 6th February 2023 and subsequent severe aftershocks have worsened the already dire situation faced by the Syrian population. In the northwest of Syria (NWS), approximately 1.9 million individuals, primarily women and children, reside in around 1,430 camps or self-settled sites. Following the quake, new waves of internal displacement occurred, with reports indicating that at least 86,000 people were newly displaced. All of this has impacted on Syrian people in complex ways. For example, adolescent boys faced risks such as death, injury, separation from family, detention, recruitment by armed groups, and engagement in child labor, and adolescent girls have been vulnerable to child marriage, online harassment, and various forms of GBV, including sexual violence. The earthquake on 6 February further compounded the crisis, worsening the existing vulnerabilities and exposure to risks faced by women and girls.

Yet it would be wrong to see the Syrian people as only victims of the situation. Across the country, there are local community-based organisations rooted in the crisis-affected communities helping people to cope, survive and respond to both the quake and other emergencies. For example, we work with women-led organisations and grassroots initiatives that have demonstrated their resilience, expertise, and deep understanding of the local context, making them valuable actors in responding to the impact of the earthquake and addressing the needs of women and girls. These organizations often have firsthand knowledge of the affected communities and can provide unique insights into the challenges faced by women and girls, including issues such as gender-based violence, access to healthcare, education, livelihoods, and psychosocial support.

Despite the Syrian crisis response having inspired the Grand Bargain localization agenda, we are yet to see effective implementation or accountability for those commitments in the aid response.

Back in 2016, when donors, UN agencies and NGOs gathered for the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS), some of the most vocal advocates for localization commitments were Syrian civil society leaders. Ministers and heads of UN agencies and INGOs acknowledged the bravery and creativity of Syrian civil society groups getting aid into besieged areas; recognizing their leadership. Seven years on from the WHS, progress on localization in Syria has been inadequate. Brussels 7 Conference is an opportunity for donors, UN agencies and INGOs to outline how they will more effectively support local organisations, and more robustly and systematically hold themselves accountable for that.  

Some efforts have been made, and now is a good time to reflect on their effectiveness and what more could be done. For example, the Syrian cross-border humanitarian pooled fund has taken steps to more effectively outreach to and support Syrian organizations to work through risk management concerns in a more fair and proportionate fashion. Funding to national NGOs through that mechanism increased as a consequence. The UN agencies and larger NGOs involved in the GBV sub-cluster, for example, have also gone through a process of developing partnerships with grassroots women’s’ organisations. When it comes to involvement in decision-making, various steps have been taken. For example, on engaging women-led organisations, a Women Advisory Group was established to connect into the Humanitarian Liaison Group (HLG), which is the highest level of UN-NGO coordination for Northwest Syria, and the newly formed AFNS (Aid Fund for Northern Syria) is also establishing a women advisory group.  

Yet there is still far to go. The heavy lifting of the coordination and decision-making processes led by the UN agencies for Northwest Syrian have been conducted in Gaziantep, Turkey, while little to none in Northwest Syria region itself. While commendable efforts have been made by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the United Nations Women (UNW), and the Gender-Based Violence (GBV) Sub-cluster to engage in dialogues with the women led organisations in the northwest, it appears that these processes primarily serve as information-gathering exercises to refine and provide nuanced input for discussions and decisions made in Gaziantep. As a result, the decision-making power remains predominantly centered on external actors, rather than reorienting the decision-making processes towards the involvement and agency of local actors.

Syrian grassroots womens’ organisations and networks, and other civil society groups working to organize and represent at-risk sections of society, face obvious risks in terms of internal political or social dynamics in the contexts in which they work. They find their ways to understand and mitigate those risks, and it is essential that any international partners to them adopt the necessary flexibility and sensitivity to help them do so. However, current donor, UN and INGO approaches to funding and partnerships can also sometimes complicate their efforts, and undermine the effectiveness of their work. The heavy compliance requirements and complex financial systems that come with most institutional donor funding, and the ways in which UN agencies and INGOs impose these onto their local partners, represent serious barriers to effective partnership. The actual funding received by grassroots groups tends to be predominantly short-term in nature, limiting their ability to plan and implement sustained programs effectively. Moreover, it often falls short in terms of covering core costs essential for organizational sustainability, instead focusing on micro-grants and cash programming modalities.  

Ways forward: A structured dialogue in each Hub and at a Whole of Syria level to establish measurable localization benchmarks to track progress, and centre the perspectives and priorities of grassroots organisations and networks at the heart of this

The time has come for donors, international agencies, national NGOs and grassroots groups and networks to find a way to reflect together on ways to overcome the limitations and barriers. We all know and recognize that there are significant risks for all organisations involved in working inside Syria – local volunteer networks, community-based organisations, larger national NGOs, INGOs, UN agencies and donors. Building trust and credibly addressing the risks have to be central to efforts on localization. It is welcome that the Syria Steering Group, which is a high-level UN-NGO coordination process, recently met and discussed for the first time establishing a more structured, systematic approach to localisation. We urgently need to see follow-up action on this.  

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When it comes to local leadership in decision-making, we need to find ways to go further in overcoming the divides between UN-NGO coordination processes that are dominated by the larger international and national actors, and the smaller grassroots groups and initiatives. Establishing a UN/NGO Whole of Syria Localisation Roadmap, and similar frameworks at the Hub levels, with clear objectives and measurable, monitorable indicators for progress on supporting grassroots groups could help.  

Likewise, when it comes to funding and partnerships, there needs to be an inter-agency dialogue about both the challenges and the potential solutions to these that involves those grassroots groups and initiatives themselves. Perhaps each cluster that has supported different kinds of sub-granting to local community-based organisation or volunteer network could organize a dialogue involving those groups and networks. Surveys could be commissioned by independent experts to inform the dialogue, which could generate more frank insights on the challenges and ways forward than if it is a donor INGO, national NGO or UN agency asking its own local partners what the issues are.  

Whilst the quake has brought the suffering in Syria back into the political spotlight, we all know that the humanitarian suffering in Syria is not just the consequence of a natural disaster. If those longer-term root causes of crisis in Syria are ever going to be addressed, it will need communities themselves to have voice, agency and an ownership of their own coping strategies and solutions. Brussels 7 should help redirect the international aid effort to recenter on that effort.