Sowing The Seeds Of A Solution: Why Progress To Peace In Syria Is Essential

As leaders meet in Geneva this week to try to find a peaceful solution to the Syria crisis, World Vision UK's Johan explains why it's essential for the future of the children of Syria that something be done. The region is facing a lost generation of children, which the world must wake up to and take action against.

By Johan Eldebo, Senior Humanitarian Policy Adviser, World Vision UK

Last week I was in Kuwait and watched the world pledge more than $2.4bn in humanitarian assistance to the Syria crisis. This is a huge amount of money, about a $1bn more than at last year’s conference.

Yet this barely meets a third of the $6.5bn the UN says it will need during 2014 — the largest humanitarian appeal in history — to provide shelter, medical assistance, food and other life-saving interventions for more than 14 million people now affected by the crisis.

World Vision's newest report, Stand With Me: Children's Rights, Wronged, shows more than 5 million children have been displaced by the crisis, both inside and outside of Syria. Many refugee children have been forced to trade a house and an education for a tented camp and hard labour. Others have been recruited into armed groups. Few are hopeful that the conflict will end soon, and have come to expect life to be hard, unforgiving and dangerous.

In response to this, World Vision is working across the region to meet some of needs of children and their families by providing food, clean water and sanitation. In communities in Lebanon and Jordan affected by the crisis through the huge influx of Syrian refugees, we’re seeking to assist with safe places for children to learn and play.

We’re also support UNICEF’s No Lost Generation initiative, which seeks to mobilise funding and resources to strategically meet the needs of those hardest hit by the crisis: the children of Syria.

As the crisis continues to grow, the world must ask how we will look back at this crisis in ten year’s time, and ask whether we will feel proud of our efforts or wish we have done more.

Two things are becoming clearer to me from a year of travelling to the Middle East and seeing this crisis first-hand from many different places and perspectives:

1. Humanitarian assistance works and we must ensure funding needs are met

The aid that has been provided by host communities, UN agencies and NGOs in Syria and in neighbouring countries has made a large difference for those forced from their homes.

In tented refugee settlements in Lebanon I saw the difference that even simple things like blankets can make for a family anticipating a cold winter, and the joy a group of children express when a teacher visits them a few times a week.

In addition, aid provided to support host communities that have often seen their towns double in population with refugees has helped keep schools open and the electricity on. This has not only allowed a semblance of normality to remain, but also helped to prevent growing tensions in increasingly crowded towns.

2. Humanitarian assistance alone will not solve the problem.

Blankets and heaters will help keep children warm in the winter, but they will not decrease the number of children crossing the border from destroyed houses to overcrowded tents. Nor will they answer 12-year-old Ziad’s question about when he can leave the Bekaa valley and go back to his hometown.

The Syria crisis is about to enter its fourth year and while the humanitarian response has been unprecedented it has been outpaced by the ever-growing needs of the people affected. The crisis would need two more Kuwait conferences this year to meet the expected needs for 2014 alone.

A negotiated settlement is the only way to end suffering and bring a close to the disruption of lives in Syria and the surrounding region. This is why progress at the Geneva peace talks is essential. A final settlement may be unlikely this week, but the seeds for such a solution must be planted and nurtured now.

We must find hope for a lost generation of Syrians.

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