Imagine if one of every three Czechs had to flee from his home. In Syria, this is a reality.

How can we imagine a catastrophe that will enter into its fourth year this weekend? Try to imagine, for example, that out of the total amount of inhabitants of the Czech republic, around 170 000 people would be killed (the entire population of the city of Pilsen) and the amount of people injured would reach the number of 690 000 (a population of the cities of Brno and Ostrava combined.)  Every second Czech person would be dependent on humanitarian aid and every third would have to flee from home and live in his or her own country under provisory conditions as a refugee. In Syria, this is the reality. Now, try to imagine that:

• Every tenth person fled from the fights to the neighboring countries: Slovakia, Austria, Germany or Poland
• Bread costs 300 CZK in average
• Every second hospital in the country has been devastated or is out of service
• Half of the Czech kids are not going to school
• You have to get along with half as much potable water per day than usual
• The electricity has been off for two years

This is the reality of today’s Syria, and the humanitarian situation is worsening every month.

The situation has gotten dramatically worse for the inhabitants of Syria’s largest city, Aleppo. Since mid December 2013, government forces have been intensively bombing and harassing the residential districts as a part of their massive offensive. The worst phenomenon of these bombings have been the barrel bombs – barrels filled with high explosives, shrapnel and oil dropped from helicopters; in the last three months, at least 350 000 people had to flee the city and the surrounding area. Sisters Maysaa and Safaa were among them. Both had been working in a school in Aleppo’s district Al Marja. “Families were fleeing from the district, so the number of kids in the school went down to a third and out of 34 teachers only 12 were left,” Maysaa recalls.

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Therefore, the director has declared a holiday for the entire month of January. “Despite all this, the teachers did not want to stop teaching, so they were going to the classes even there were no pupils. On the 19^th of January, the entire school had to be closed down, as it became too dangerous,” Safaa recalls. Around these days, the first two rockets fell on the street where Maysaa and Safaa lived. The next day, the sisters and their families fled towards the Turkish border in hopes that they could connect with their relatives in Turkey. “We could not connect to them, however, so we were left with only one option – to stay in the refugee camp Bab Essalama,” Maysaa says. Now they are living in a tent, and have managed to find themselves a job at the camp’s school.

Humanitarian crisis in Syria in numbers:

150 000 people died in the conflict

680 000 have been wounded

9 300 000 Syrians need humanitarian aid

6 500 000 Syrians fled from their homes and are living as refugees in their own country

2 500 000 Syrians fled across the state border, out of which 1, 2 million are kids

64% of Syrian hospitals were seriously damaged and 40% are out of service completely

4 000 Syrian schools are devastated and are now occupied by refugees or used for  army purposes

The NGO People in need (PIN) has been helping Syrians since the spring of 2012. The donation account SOS Syria was launched during the same period. A PIN team has been active in Syria since the fall of 2012. In January 2014, three of the local workers, along with 5 kids, were killed during a bombing of a residential district in Aleppo. Ever since, the security of the situation has gotten worse every day, and limits the possibility to deliver humanitarian aid to the city.

As a result, PIN decided to open new offices in the province of Halab. The local team has been successful in delivering food aid to Aleppo, as well as flour to local bakeries. They have been also supporting the schools of Aleppo. At the same time, the team concentrates on finding out what the needs are in the province, and then begins distributions. Another PIN team has been active in the province of Idlib, where it focuses on helping those in dire need.

So far, People in Need has succeeded in delivering direct help to 400 000 people. “Most of all, we are providing the families in need with food and material help, such as blankets, mattresses and cloths. People are also getting financial resources so they can buy what they need the most,” says Jitka Skovrankova, the coordinator of PIN’s Syrian programs.

People in Need organization has been providing local bakeries with flour, and gas to run their electric generators so they can bake bread. The poorest families are getting bread on daily basis, which they collect from several distribution places. The Syrian team also distributes nursing packages to mothers, repairs water sources and collects garbage from the streets, which is often the cause of many infectious diseases. They have also been active in the field of education. “We are repairing schools, taking care of the heating, making the electricity work, or we provide lectures and contributions to the teachers. We give the kids school supplies or lunch boxes,” says coordinator Jitka Skovrankova.

People in Need help in numbers:

400 000 people received direct help

120 000 received monthly food supply

120 000 people received material help

20 000 people got daily supply of bread every month

30 000 kids received nursing packages

70 000 cubic metres of garbage has been collected and taken away from the streets of Aleppo

170 000 people in Idlib now have access to water thanks to the repaired water system

In the last few weeks, the fights and continuous battering of the city of Aleppo has made the delivery of aid quite complicated. “In the past, we were supporting 25 schools in Aleppo and Idlib combined, but with regards to the current security situation, we can only support 12 of them,” says Jitka Skovrankova, pointing out that the team has been monitoring the needs in the rural areas of the Aleppo province and is now enrolling new pupils to schools. Additionally, People in Need’s Syrian team has trained five local self-governments, who are now able to provide basic services and help to the local citizens.

Diplomacy has failed in the case of the Syrian conflict, and the practical steps proposed by the UN Security Council have been paralyzed up to this point by the approach of Russia and China. The first breakthrough was the ratification of the UN Security Council resolution, which on February 22^nd appealed to all the sides of the conflict to allow access to humanitarian help immediately. “After this diplomatic breakthrough, there has to be a humanitarian breakthrough as well, and all the actors have to be able to prove they can ensure access of the help – especially to the locations that have been left inaccessible and thus with no help whatsoever for months now, due to the siege. The situation in these places is absolutely tragic,” says Marek Stys, the director of PIN’s humanitarian programs.

In this regard, the situation in Syria is not very promising. Especially in the North where the fights still continue between the armies of the regime, radical Islamists and the moderate opposition. “This has been one of the worst periods of the conflict so far. Across the country, around 200 people are dying every day. Aleppo and other places are still being severely bombed, with barrel bombs even and this causes large losses of human lives,” says Marek Stys. “What more, the military loop is tightening around Aleppo and there is a possibility that the fights will cut off the last accesses to this largest Syrian city. Then, hundreds of thousands of people would stay without help,” he adds.

The people from the Syrian Freedom community of the Czech republic will acknowledge the third anniversary of the Syrian conflict on the 15^th of March, at 2 PM by the Statue of St. Wenceslas on the Wenceslas square in Prague. Please come and support their event.

People in Need in Syria

The People in Need organization has been concentrating on directly delivering food, material and medical help to the victims of the Syrian conflict. With permanent offices and teams present in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib, PIN is among one of the biggest suppliers of help within the country of Syria. Through the donation account SOS Syria, the Czech society has contributed 8 million CZK and another 5 millions have been allocated from the humanitarian fund of the PIN’s Club of Friends. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, partnered NGO from the Aliance2015 Welthungerhilfe or the Vodafone Foundation have largely contributed as well. People in Need has already helped around 400 000 Syrians suffering from the war conflict and has aided them with 140 millions CZK. You can learn more about the PIN’s humanitarian activities in Syria here.

For more information, please contact Marek Štys, director of the relief & development programmes of PIN:

 tel. +420 777 053 522, mail Marek.Stys@clovekvtisni.cz