Syria, by the numbers

With the Syrian uprising and civil war approaching its second year, Turtle Bay decided to have a look at some of the underlying U.N. numbers — some familiar and some more obscure — that tell the toll of the country’s suffering.

• More than 60,000 people have died, including more than 70 men and boys found executed this week in Aleppo.
• 4 million people — that’s one in five Syrians — are in need of humanitarian assistance, including 3 million in need of food.
• 2 million Syrians have fled their homes, 700,000 of whom are now refugees in neighboring Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey. That figure could rise to over 1.1 million by the end of 2013.
• 400,000 of the country’s 500,000 Palestinian refugees are in need of humanitarian assistance.
• Syria’s economy was expected to have shrunk by 20 percent in 2012, while inflation rose 40 percent since the crisis began, according to the Institute for International Finance.

As United States and other wealthy governments converged on Kuwait for an international donor conference on Syria, Valerie Amos, the U.N.’s emergency relief coordinator, said the reality of the situation is potentially worse than we know, especially in the face of a bitterly cold winter. U.N. officials say it’s hard to quantify the suffering, particularly given the Syrian government’s refusal to let U.N. relief workers deliver assistance to rebel-controlled areas from neighboring Turkey. But Amos and other U.N. officials have detailed some of the lesser-known facts and figures to give a sense of the impact the crisis is having on ordinary Syrians, and the costs of not responding.

• 25 percent of Syria’s schools are closed, either destroyed or converted into shelters.
• More than half of Syria’s public hospitals have been damaged, and one-third are out of service.
• 40 percent of ambulances have been damaged, and there are shortages of medicines, like anesthetics, serums, and intravenous fluids. Painkillers are not available in most hospitals.
• There is a 50 percent shortage of medical staff in hospitals recently visited by U.N. relief officials
• Cereal, fruit, and vegetable production has dropped by half in some areas
• 18 U.N. staff have been detained by Syrian authorities
• Last year, a convoy of humanitarian relief workers en route to deliver assistance to Homs had to pass 21 checkpoints. They crossed 20 before being turned back at the final one.

The scale of the suffering has generated calls from the United Nations for a massive humanitarian response, including appeals for $519 million in assistance for distressed Syrians inside their own country, and another $1 billion for Syrian refugees that have fled the country’s violence.

In recent days, the U.N. and international advocacy groups cited figures suggesting that the international community has been unwilling to pay the price for responding to the need. A coalition of non-governmental organizations singled out six countries — Brazil, Japan, China, South Korea, Russia, and Mexico — that together account for a quarter of the world’s GDP, but which have provided little or no funding. "Donors have not stepped up to their responsibilities in this past period," said John Ging, the U.N. humanitarian relief agencies director of operations.

But U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in Kuwait today that the U.N. surpassed its target with more than $1.5 billion in pledges, easily meeting its funding appeals. The key donors include:

• The United States, the largest foreign donor to date, pledged $155 million, more than doubling its prior pledge, which brings the total contribution to nearly $350 million
• Britain pledged to give an additional $110 million this week, bringing its total contributions to the Syrian crisis to $220 million
• Kuwait pledged $300 million
• United Arab Emirates pledged $300 million
• Saudi Arabia pledged $300 million

But government pledges at donor conferences don’t always result in money spent.

U.N. officials said that the Kuwait conference was a promising start. "Money has been pledged, but that is just the start," Amos said after the conference. "We now have to do all we can to turn that into action on the ground — but the environment in which we work is extremely challenging."

Indeed, it is. On Tuesday, the French aid agency, Medecins Sans Frontiers, protested that international assistance was primarily being delivered to civilians in government-controlled areas.

Ging challenged that assessment, saying that at least 48 percent of international assistance was being delivered by the Syrian Red Crescent and a handful of other international relief organizations to opposition areas.

But he acknowledged that the U.N. has gained little access to rebel-controlled territory in the north, primarily as a result of the Syrian government’s refusal to permit them access through the Turkish border. Ging said the U.N. was relying on the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to verify whether money channeled through the Syrian Red Crescent is going to those in need, regardless of political affiliation.

But he said the U.N. is also not naïve about the risks of assistance being diverted to pro-government communities and that the organization is working to expand the presence of international relief agencies in Syria.

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