Among the companies that received U.N. procurement money in Syria was one owned by a sanctioned militia leader linked to a massacre outside Damascus and another owned by the family members of a businessman who allegedly profited from trading the rubble of buildings shelled by government forces, the study said.

“When humanitarian assistance is systematically abused and distorted, under the pretext of protecting the neutrality of humanitarian operations, it may become a dangerous weapon in the hands of the government against its people,” the report’s authors wrote.

The U.N. has long been known to contract companies linked to the Assad regime, which has overseen a decade-long civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced around seven million to flee their homes.

Click here to read the full report.

U.N. staff have spent tens of millions of dollars staying at the Damascus Four Seasons hotel, which is partly owned by regime-allied businessman Samer Foz, for instance. The United States sanctioned Foz in 2019, saying he had “leveraged the atrocities of the Syrian conflict into a profit-generating enterprise” and was “directly supporting the murderous Assad regime.”

But the new study — published on Tuesday by the London-based Syrian Legal Development Program (SLDP) and the Observatory of Political and Economic Networks (OPEN) — was the first major attempt to analyze just how much U.N. procurement money is going to human rights abusers or figures who are sanctioned or connected to the Assad regime and the conflict.

In total, the United Nations paid out around $406 million in procurement spending in Syria in 2019 and 2020, covering a wide variety of goods and services such as food, accommodation, medical equipment, security, training, IT services, chemicals, and office materials. About $75 million went to companies which were not identified for “privacy reasons” or “security reasons.”

Of the remaining amount, the report analyzed the money that went to the U.N.’s top 100 known suppliers in Syria — and found that about $137 million went to what the report called “high” or “very high” risk companies, including those owned by war profiteers, sanctioned people, and prominent regime allies.

Reporters from OCCRP and its media partner, Syrian Investigative Reporting For Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ), assisted with research, were granted advance access to the report, and carried out their own analysis of the U.N. procurement database, which corroborated many of the report’s key findings. They also found examples of problematic disbursements before 2019.

In one of the more striking cases, about $1.4 million in UN funding was also provided to the Syria Trust for Development, a foundation established and run by Syria’s First Lady Asma Al-Assad, in 2015 and 2017, ostensibly for emergency shelter and “non-food items,” according to the U.N. Financial Tracker Service.

Carsten Wieland, a German policy adviser and author of a book about humanitarian aid in the Syrian conflict, expressed alarm at the findings.

“It is very appalling that there has not been sufficient due diligence inside the U.N. where these organizations came from, or are a hidden arm of someone else,” he told OCCRP.

Francesco Galtieri, a senior U.N. official based in Damascus, said that the United Nations provided assistance “with strict adherence to humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, independence, and impartiality.”

He said that internal due diligence procedures had been strengthened over the past two years and that donor states could ask for details of contracts through a formal audit process. The U.N. also continuously reviews allegations and “disengages” if evidence suggests “the involvement of vendors and suppliers in proscribed practices,” he said.

“All U.N. agencies apply diligent effort to ensuring an in-depth understanding of the breadth of factors relevant to conflict sensitivity and due diligence practices in Syria, to ensure that programming and related operational procedures are risk aware and do no harm,” Galtieri told OCCRP.

The Rise of War Profiteers

Syria’s government has maintained a tight grip over the economy for decades, with allies and relatives of the ruling Assad family dominating key sectors such as telecommunications, infrastructure, and real estate.

Since the 2011 uprising and the ensuing civil war, the Syrian regime has become even more reliant on a new class of war profiteers and proxies to help it skirt sanctions and maintain control over its last few remaining sources of foreign currency.

At the same time, Syria has become one of the world’s largest recipients of humanitarian assistance. Since 2011, over $40 billion of aid money has flowed into the country, more than half of that through the U.N., according to researchers.

The SLDP and OPEN study shows that many in the regime’s inner circle have benefited from this influx of cash.

For instance, a company called Desert Falcon LLC, run by pro-regime commander Fadi Ahmad, received over $1 million in 2019 and 2020 from the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF and its refugee agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, under a variety of categories including “apparel,” “office equipment,” “electronics,” and “manufacturing components.”

In 2012, Ahmad, also known as Fadi Saqr, took command of the pro-government National Defense Forces militia in Damascus. The following year, the militia took part in a massacre of dozens of people in the Syrian capital’s Tadamon district.

Desert Falcon’s co-owner is Bilal Al-Naal, who has been a member of Syrian parliament since 2020. Another company owned by Naal, Al-Naal LLC, received over $1.2 million in funds, also from UNICEF and UNRWA, listed under categories including “apparel,” “paper materials,” and “medical equipment,” the study found.

Another company, Jupiter for Investments SA, which received over half a million dollars from UNICEF for “management and admin services,” is owned by relatives of regime ally Mohammad Hamsho, including four who are under sanctions. Hamsho, who is also sanctioned by the United States and the European Union, has been accused of trading in the rubble from destroyed homes and acting as a front for Assad’s brother, Maher, who heads the army’s elite Fourth Armored Division.

Cham Wings, a Syrian airline sanctioned by the United States, received over half a million dollars from the World Food Program, the study said. The airline was also sanctioned along with its owner and chairman by the European Union for exacerbating the refugee crisis on the borders of Belarus in 2021 and 2022, but the sanctions were lifted earlier this year.

A variety of other companies receiving U.N. funds were linked to the Assad family, including multiple relatives and partners of Assad’s cousin, the sanctioned business tycoon Rami Makhlouf. Many of Makhlouf’s assets were stripped and he was put under house arrest in a conflict with Syrian authorities over the past two years.

Earlier this month, the Associated Press separately reported that staff members at the U.N.’s World Health Organization in Syria had accused their boss of mismanaging millions of dollars and using the agency’s funds to buy gifts for Syrian government officials.

The Report

The influx of foreign currency brought by humanitarian aid spending is a boon for the Syrian government, which has struggled to procure cash amid international sanctions, the collapse of its most productive economic sectors, and a financial crisis in neighboring Lebanon.

U.N. agencies that spend money in Syria are required by the government to exchange currency at the official exchange rate, which is far below the black market rates. Karam Shaar, the co-author of the report, said that in his research he found the U.N. exchanged some $340 million at the official rate in 2020, which was on average 50 percent lower than the black market rate that year.

The differential resulted in $170 million of “diverted” donor money, although it is not exactly clear how or where the government diverted these amounts, he said.

The SLDP and OPEN study analyzed about $294 million in procurement funding, representing the amount that went to the U.N.’s top 100 suppliers in Syria in 2019 and 2020, and including companies that are fully private or those with both public and private shareholders.

Drawing on business directories which rely on the official Syrian gazette, as well as news websites and social media, they divided the suppliers into four levels of risk, based on a guide written by SLDP and Human Rights Watch.

“Very high risk” companies included companies with links to human rights abuses, paramilitary groups, the private security industry, the destruction of civilian property, the development of land where people were forcibly displaced, and support for the Syrian armed forces and government since 2011.

“High risk” included companies which have received Syrian state contracts or held monopolies over certain sectors, were owned by members of parliament or other local officials, had donated to Syrian entities, or taken part in economic blockades of opposition-held areas.

The study found that about 36 percent of the funds it analyzed went to “very high risk” companies, while another 10 percent went to “high risk” companies, 30 percent to “medium,” and 23 percent to “low risk” companies.

Wieland, the policy adviser, said that thorough reform would be needed to get out of the “neutrality trap” and make sure that U.N. money was not going to suppliers like those listed in the report.

“It is something so tricky, and so politically relevant, that it has to come from somebody so far up,” he told OCCRP. “This has not been done. I have not seen any real will to tackle such issues.”

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“The corpses the officers had marked we would later dig up and hand back to them. They would ask the victims’ families for $1,500 to $3,000 per body.”

Syria’s Sinister yet Lucrative Trade in Dead Bodies, Anwar al-Muhammad was wandering around the garbage dump like he had done for years, looking for anything of value that could be traded or sold, when he suddenly smelt a strange smell. It was moldy mixed with the reek of flesh. At first he thought it was a dead dog.

What the 35-year-old garbage collector found instead in the landfill in the village of Hadath east of Aleppo would turn his life upside down, and turn him into a very rich man.

As it turned out, the smell emanated from the partly decomposed body of someone recently liquidated by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).“If it were not for the remains of God’s creation, I would not have been able to build my house on the land I inherited from my father,” said Anwar pointing at his home. “Look, it has a courtyard and stone fences. And I have planted olive seedlings.” Having dug a hole next to the dump Anwar buried what was left of the corpse. He feared leaving it out in the open might attract stray dogs. This was in August 2014.

Like most people in the region, Anwar did not know why ISIS killed these people and dumped their bodies the way they did. Yet, on the foreheads of most of the bodies ISIS fighters had written in blue or black “infidel” or “apostate.”

After the first corpse had been dumped, many others followed,” Anwar explained. “Most bodies had ropes around their feet, hands or necks. Initially, the ISIS fighters warned me that if I were to recognize a body and contact the family, my place would be among the dead.”

Like most people in the region, Anwar did not know why ISIS killed these people and dumped their bodies the way they did. Yet, on the foreheads of most of the bodies ISIS fighters had written in blue or black “infidel” or “apostate.”

ISIS used to throw bodies in wells, dry streams or river beds and garbage dumps, according to reports issued by both local and international human rights organizations.

Anwar gradually became aware that the bodies had a value and price, as some point he started selling them to the victims’ relatives. “That’s how I made the money I would never have made just working in a landfill,” he said.

13th Century Fatwa

From 2013 to 2015, more than 20 mass graves were found across Syria, containing thousands of bodies. One of the most famous places where ISIS used to dump its victims is the 50-meter deep Al-Hota pit, located some 85 kilometers from the northern city of Raqqa.

“The Al Hota gorge was once a beautiful natural site,” said Syrian researcher Sarah Kayyali in Into The Abyss, a report issued by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in May last year. “It became a place for terror and punishment.”

During our 18-month investigation in Syria and neighboring countries, we did many interviews and obtained photographs confirming the trade in dead bodies. We tracked four cases in different geographical areas to ensure there is a pattern to the trade which has made some individuals involved in the conflict very rich indeed.

In the governorates of Deir Ezzor and Raqqa and the countryside of Aleppo, ISIS did not give the bodies to the families, based on a fatwa issued by the 13th century Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, which states it is forbidden to bury an “apostate” in a Muslim cemetery. And so ISIS threw them in wells, dumps and large pits instead.

In 2015, one family was searching the dumps in the countryside north of Allepo for the body of their son, who had been killed by ISIS for “dealing with foreign parties.”The family met Anwar and offered him $7,000 for finding their son, after they had been told his body was thrown onto a village dump. They even told Anwar not to worry “if the corpse were decayed, for they could still recognize it from the teeth.”

Anwar told the ISIS fighters who regularly came to the dump to throw bodies about the family looking for their son. They demanded $10,000 for the body. Anwar would get a commission of 100,000 Syrian pounds.

8,143 People Still Missing

“The Islamic State’s (ISIS) expansion in Iraq and Syria featured horrendous public abuses,” HRW stated in its report Kidnapped By ISIS, which was issued in February 2019. “Largely unseen but equally egregious were the widespread detentions and kidnappings – thousands of people snatched from their homes and cars and at checkpoints, who subsequently went missing.”

While the full scale of the missing is not known, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has reported more than 8,143 cases of individuals detained by ISIS whose fates remain unknown. The majority of those taken were men. But HRW also documented the disappearances of several women.

“ISIS members would ask for money in exchange for informing families about the fate of their son,” Anwar said. “People did not bargain a lot.”

When we were researching other waste dumps in the Aleppo countryside to confirm what Anwar told us, one worker there told us: “They were throwing bodies, once or twice a day. And I also saw them take bodies from the dump.”

Yasser Al-Najjar used to work as an official for the Syrian military authorities negotiating the exchange of prisoners and dead bodies. “ISIS at times had crippling conditions in their requests,” he said in his office in Kilis in southern Turkey. “But that did not stop them from selling bodies for money. In the shadows, far away from media and cameras, anything is possible in Syria.”

SNHR director Fadel Abdul-Ghani told us how one of his teams once witnessed an exchange between the Syrian regime and opposition factions, in which the bodies of Iranian militants were handed over in return for the release of detainees.

In Damascus

A Syrian man currently living in the Swedish capital Stockholm used to work for a public funeral service in Damascus which transported bodies to cemeteries on a daily basis. At first, he refused to speak with us, but after several calls he finally agreed to give us his testimony on the condition of anonymity.

“Our assignment was to transport bodies from the Tishreen Military Hospital and the Mezzeh 601 Military Hospital to two large cemeteries in Qatifah, north of Damascus, and one in Najha, south of the capital,” he said. “The car looked like a decorated box with pictures of Bashar al-Assad on all sides, so we could pass all checkpoints.”

“Some corpses had specific numbers or signs on them, which we would bury next to the mass grave,” he continued. “The others were thrown into the mass grave, one on top of the other, and covered with sand by a bulldozer.”

“The corpses which the officers had marked, we would later take out and hand back to them,” he added, after pausing to drink a cup of water. “For each body, they demanded some $1,500 to $3,000 from the victims’ families.”

He then made us listen to audio recordings and phone messages of conversations between him and the military and security officers. He estimated the total number of bodies he contributed to selling at 125.

According to HRW, the Syrian regime arrested and forcibly disappeared tens of thousands of people. The detention centers under its control are known for the widespread and systematic use of torture, and catastrophic living conditions. According to the SNHN, there are still some 130,000 detainees in the detention centers of the Syrian regime, including 7,913 women and 3,561 children, which represents 88.5% of all detainees in Syria.

The Corpse Market

In August 2020, 30-year-old May learnt that her husband Zaid Jibril had been killed three years after his arrest by the Syrian regime’s security forces for “organizing anti-regime demonstrations.” He was buried in the Qatifah cemetery north of Damascus,May said she was forced to sell her house to be able to pay $7,000 to an officer in the Syrian security services through a local broker, who then brought her husband’s body, so she could bury it.

“I thank God I was able to obtain my husband’s body so our children can visit,” said May by Skype from a refugee camp in the northwestern state of Idlib. “Many families paid money to regime officers and brokers. Many sold everything they owned to obtain news of their loved ones.”

“Trading in corpses, mortgaging them to exchange or sell them is considered a crime against humanity by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” said legal expert Hussein Hamadeh.

According to him, any assault on or mutilation of corpses, leaving them in the open, not allowing them to be buried, using them as tools of political pressure or selling them violates international law. Authorities are furthermore not allowed to intentionally withhold information about those missing, given the level of anxiety and mental stress it produces for friends and families. When the person in question dies, the authorities must provide the family with information regarding the place of burial.

Five BodiesAhmed Al-Sayed’s family learnt that one of their sons had been arrested by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) during their control of the city of Raqqa in October 2017.

The young man was arrested after an airstrike near the Abu Al-Hays intersection. The 34-year-old was transferred to a nearby medical center. His father told us that the family had asked all the center’s health workers about their son, but at first they could not find him.

A few days later a  military source told the family their son had been killed. Obtaining the body would cost them $10,000. “We paid the full amount to a SDF commander through a local broker and started digging near the archaeological park in Raqqa,” said Ahmed’s brother. “We found five bodies, one of which was my brother. We reburied the others in the same place, while we took my brother’s body to the family cemetery on the outskirts of Raqqa.”

We requested representatives of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, as well as the Syrian Ministry of Interior to comment on our findings, yet did not receive a response.

As soon as the burial begins, the march of Abu Al-Ward begins too. And of all others who work just like him.

The March of Abu Ward

Abu Al-Ward is a local broker in the city of Idlib. After burying some bodies, he and three young men set out to search for a corpse that someone had asked for in exchange for $3,000.

In the center of Idlib, you can see bodies entering the forensic medical center on a daily basis. They were found, or belong to people killed in mysterious circumstances. Some 75 bodies a week arrive, according to the center’s documentation office.

“There are bodies that the courts and hospitals refuse to hand over to their families, especially those known as Shabiha [gangs closely related to the Baath Party],” said Abu Al-Ward by WhatsApp. “What follows is the process of handing over the body and receiving the money.”

“The body remains in the fridge for some 15 days to a month,” said Ali Al-Taqash who works at a medical center. “Samples for DNA testing are stored to facilitate future identification.”

As soon as the burial begins, the march of Abu Al-Ward begins too. And of all others who work just like him.

The Corpse in the Well

On January 6, 2014, the family of Mohamad al-Ali (a pseudonym) managed to obtain his body, which had been thrown in a well near the town of Deir Sunbul in the Idlib countryside.

Mohamad had been kidnapped at a checkpoint of the Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF) and was later liquidated by a gunshot to the head

“After negotiations that lasted for days, we paid a local mediator $10,000 and the SRF allowed us to extract the body from the well,” said the young man’s family.

Local activists we met in the north of Syria and Turkey said they witnessed the sale of at least five bodies between January 2012 and March 2014. Their statements were backed by photographs and videos of the negotiations and sale, which are in our possession.

Military Gains

On the road between the Jenderes border crossing and the village of Qatma north of Aleppo, we met Abu Jaafar, who used to be responsible for forensic medicine in the opposition-held areas east of Syria until late 2016.

He had witnessed the exchange of bodies between the armed opposition and the regime and pointed at another dimension of the trade, which reflected military gains in the war.

“The body of one fighter in an Iranian-backed militia was exchanged for five or six detainees alive in the prisons of the Syrian regime,” he said.

The Syrian war has witnessed countless negotiations and exchanges of bodies and prisoners between the regime and the opposition. In August 2012, the Al-Baraa Brigade in Eastern Ghouta concluded a deal with the regime to release over 2,000 detainees from Syrian prisons, in exchange for the release of 48 Iranians, most of them belonging to the military.

“Any assault on a corpse is considered a crime prohibited in international law,” said SNHN director Abdul-Ghani. “Take the The Hague Convention on respecting the laws and customs of war, which clearly stipulates a commander is responsible for all actions of people under his command, and calls for respecting the dead and preventing the remains from being despoiled.”

This investigation was carried out under supervision of the Syrian Investigative Journalism Unit Siraj and edited by Mohammad Bassiki. published on DARAJ. 

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Hammado lives in Hanbushiyeh, a village located in the countryside of Jisr al-Shughur District, Idlib, northern Syria. She is worried that her adult siblings might contract the virus, since they spend most of the day outdoors and come home in the evening. According to her, they know it is time to return home when they feel hungry, but the news of the coronavirus outbreak has raised her concerns, and disrupted her plans. “We are worried about their health more than ours. I have taught them how to clean themselves, what and how to eat,” explains Hammado.

It is worth mentioning that Hammado communicates with her siblings through words and gestures, as well as repeating her words more than once, so that they would understand her and carry out what she told them to do. The spread of the virus across the world, and the fear of its outbreak in Syria with its deteriorating medical conditions, and the destruction of its infrastructure, are all factors that add salt to the wounds of a vulnerable sector of Syrians, namely, those with mental disabilities. Most of them are young people with ages ranging between 18-35 years old, who are unfortunately suffering in despair, as they fail to attract the attention of social and medical services providers. Hence, their burden rests solely on their relatives amid an acute shortage of aid facilities to combat the epidemic.  

“Unfortunately, people with special needs and mental disabilities have no access to medical facilities to save them from being infected,” commented the head of a treatment and psychological support center based in the countryside of Aleppo.

With the COVID-19 outbreak, specialists and doctors have repeatedly reported a surge in levels of violence against people of special needs, which leaves them in a very vulnerable situation and exacerbates their sufferings, according to the facts revealed in this report.

Flawed Laws

One of the challenges faced by disabled people, including those with a mental disability, mental illness, and others who have psychological and mental disorders, is the flawed laws concerning their conditions. Some cases aren’t necessarily a mental disorder, but legal texts occasionally use inadequate medical terms, resulting in a confusion between mental incapacities and psychological disorders. For example, the Syrian Personal Status Law stipulates that “a madman is fully incapacitated. In other words, all his actions shall be deemed null and void. He has no free will and all his actions are illegal, namely, buying and selling.”

Rahada Abdoush, a Lawyer from Damascus, pointed out that the current legal texts were drafted in the 1950s, and contain outdated terms that must be changed, such as the phrase “insane” and “imbecile.” Therefore in court, deciding on a matter, in practice, depends on the medical expert report. “The law does not determine the nature of the mental illness, but the medical expert report does. It distinguishes between the incompetent, the simpleton, the mentally ill, and the insane. It identifies all sorts of mental incapacities, as well as defining the aim of the law, the competence of a patient to manage his possessions and control his actions, and determines whether he needs a guardian and a curator. It also predicts the duration of his/her custody whether it is permanent or for a limited time,” Abdoush tells Daraj.

As of 2016, more than 10 thousand people were interdicted of their legal capacity in the five years that past, due to their incapacity and mental abnormality that were deemed to be “insane” or “imbecile,” according to Mahmoud al-Marawi, the first sharia court judge in Damascus, and according to the current legal characterization in Syria.

“To interdict a mentally disabled person of his legal capacity as well as the seizure of his money, upon the request of one of his relatives, the patient must undergo a medical examination that confirms his mental disorder,” explains the lawful judge.

It’s worth mentioning that no such cases of coronavirus have been reported, neither in other Syrian regions under the control of the opposition, Northern Syria, or in the Autonomous Administration of East Syria.

However, the Crnic institute has recently published a study in the scientific journal Nature revealing that Down syndrome patients are more susceptible to autoimmune diseases, and therefore more likely to be infected with COVID-19.  

Acute Shortage of Doctors

The situation of those who are mentally challenged has become increasingly complicated, with an acute shortage of specialist doctors and care centres. Doctor scarcity rates have surged, and the medical centres’ readiness for treatment and diagnosis have decreased as a result of the conflict. The official figures have estimated that the number of psychologists in Syria is only around 70 psychologists, which would cover around 9% of the needs. “There are three doctors for every one million people, while the acceptable global rate is one doctor for every 10,000 people,” explains Dr. Mazen Haydar, President of the Syrian Association of Psychiatrists.

During her long working day from the morning until late at night, Maha Jawad, the Psychiatry specialist, who works at “Al-Nafs Al-Mutmainnah” centre, an affiliate of the Syrian American Medical Society, SAMS, in Al-Dana village in Aleppo’s rural areas, raises awareness about the necessity of preventing their relatives and family members who suffer from mental disabilities and psychiatric disorders from participating in gatherings because their susceptibility of contracting the virus is higher than others, due to the lack of sufficient information to face the pandemic .

The employees working in the centre, which provides services in the field of mental illness and chronic diseases for nearly 4,000 persons varying between existing and new cases, are currently reinforcing health awareness to patients and their families on personal hygiene, sanitization and regular hand washing, in light of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Muhammad Bassam Abdul-Kareem (17 years), is among the patients regularly visiting the centre to receive medical services and counseling. According to his father (Bassam), the young man suffers from physical and mental disabilities, and often endures painful convulsions and seizures.

Muhammad lives with his family in the Hazano region in Idlib’s countryside. These days, his father is mainly concerned about the fear of the spread of the pandemic following its outbreak in Syria, and the lack of tranquilizers and neurological medications in the region. Even if they were to be available they were often overpriced.

“We suffer from the lack of medicine, and we must be very cautious with our son, we give him disinfectants and face masks, and we prevent him from being exposed to others to protect his health,” explains Bassam.

One of the doctors in Idlib has noted that the Sharia Court in Damascus reported that ‘insanity’ and ‘imbecile’ cases, which are the terms that the Syrian law uses to refer to people with mental disabilities, account for 50 cases only in Idlib governorate in 2014, 250 cases in Aleppo and around 3,000 cases all around Syria. He added that it has recently become hard to count the cases due to the repetitive displacement and intermittent military attacks that hinder the work of specialised organisations and medical centres.

According to the agreement on the rights of people with disabilities ratified by Syria, the state should be committed to provide people with disabilities with forms of human aid. The official website of the Syrian ministry of health has estimated that the number of beneficiaries of mental health services in 2019 amounted to 135,242 people. 

One Quarter of the Village Residents are “Disabled”

Mariam complains about everything, starting from the lack of social and medical support to her four brothers, and the lack of support for people with mental disability in general, to the fact that no one is helping them in facing COVID-19, to the family’s weak purchasing power. She noted that her family needs 2500 to 3000 Syrian liras per day ( US$ 1) only to buy bread, given that 1 kg of bulgur wheat costs 1,000 liras and 1kg of lentils costs 1,300 liras.

Shaker Abdou, the local council representative in “Al-Hanbousheh” village in Jisr Al-Shaghour countryside, stressed that the council is unable to provide aid or support for disabled people due to the lack of support by humanitarian organisations, the lack of expertise and the absence of medical centres in the village.   The local council official has estimated that the number of disabled people in the village accounts for 25% of the residents, around one quarter of the village residents. This is attributed to the frequent marriage among relatives, which often complicates the situation further. This reality has affected Mariam, and people like her, as she tries hard to protect her siblings from contracting the Coronavirus, even though she also suffers from a disability in her right foot as a result of around 9 surgeries to be able to walk on her feet again.

Fear of the Unknown

Not only do the special needs people living in northern Syria not receive adequate support and aid, but also those in other regions, particularly areas that have been witnessing military action and airstrikes in eastern Syria during the battles against ISIS.

Continuous cleaning and the fear of infection of people with mental disabilities and those with fragile physical structures, compel the mother of the young Khedr Issa, 30 years, from the village of Qara Qoy, a town of Darbasiyah in Hasakah, to be close to him day and night.

Young Khedr, registered with the Directorate of Social Affairs and Labor in Hasakah, as a person who is suffering from mental retardation, with deformities in the head and eye, needs a caregiver, and has not received any official assistance. No one has ever inquired about his health status before, neither during quarantine periods, nor during the peak global spread of the disease, nor after the spread of the virus in Syria.

His mother is fully in charge of taking care of his health, and protecting him from the pandemic, despite her severe poverty status.

“We have not received help from anyone,” she says, sitting in her rural home’s court, “He washes his hands daily with soap, I don’t allow him to go out and mix. I have been taking care of him since he was a young boy. I don’t know who will take care of him when I am gone… I love him a lot.”

On the other hand, some medical centers in the Hasakah region provide services, in the fields of educational support and child protection, including the “Smart” Center in al-Qamishli, established in 2012 and with projects extending to al-Hasakah, Deir al-Zour, and Raqqa. As the Coronavirus epidemic began to spread, there were no plans to target people with mental disabilities with awareness programs, according to the psychologist and director of the center, Mohammad Ali Uthman.

“There is no special support for people with disabilities to protect them against COVID-19, the projects are related to education and child protection, but we are working on spreading awareness and printing posters for prevention,” he added.   Safety instructions targeting about 500 people, including children, include maintaining social distancing, at a distance of at least one meter, disinfection, as well as wearing gloves and masks.

Violence During Coronavirus

People with special mental needs are living with the consequences of COVID-19, whether they are adults or children, a large part of them remaining home to avoid mixing, according to the director of the Smart Medical Center.

Staying at home can be a positive factor, protecting them against the disease, and against being affected by other factors, such as violence towards them; for specialists began to record levels of violence against them during the Coronavirus pandemic in Syria. This was demonstrated by the results of a questionnaire prepared by the Syria Bright Future (SBF) foundation for psychiatric health, social support, and protection, to measure levels of violence toward people with special needs, and the levels at which they have access to adequate information about COVID-19 in Syria.

The survey revealed, according to psychiatry consultant Mohamed Abu-Hilal (44 years old), that 20% of the respondents believe that “there is an increase in violence against people with disabilities during this period, and that 25% of those who answered the questionnaire believe that people with disabilities do not have sufficient information about the disease.”

“Violence has increased in general because of increased friction among people throughout the day, and due to the stressful atmosphere affecting families and special needs people, and thus the ability to understand their behavior has declined,” he explained.

Moreover, a report concerned with psychological and social support during the period of Coronavirus, issued by IASC-Inter Agency Standing Committee, shows that disabled people face obstacles during the spread of COVID-19, such as the cost of health care that limits their access to services, as well as prejudices, stigma and discrimination against them, including the belief that they cannot contribute to the response to the outbreak of the Coronavirus. This leaves them and their caregivers with additional pressure.

In Syria, the Coronavirus pandemic has been putting additional weight on an already-exhausted people, and the more fragile segments seem to be forgotten models of daily Syrian suffering.

The Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ)

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