Abstract
Thirteen years into conflict, Syria remains one of the world's major humanitarian crises. Food insecurity has reached unprecedented levels in the country, with millions of civilians facing starvation and hunger. The key drivers of this are conflict-related, nature-induced, and, importantly, man-made policies. Semi-comprehensive sanctions against the country and donor conditionality vis-à-vis humanitarian operators' work are prime examples of the latter. These policies are inextricably linked with food insecurity in Syria and have direct and indirect impacts on it. Understanding the ongoing crisis as a complex emergency, this paper examines the interplay between sanctions, donor conditionality, and food insecurity, an understudied subject in the Syrian context. It explores how sanctions and donor conditionality influence three key dimensions of food security, namely, availability, affordability and economic access, and utilisation, and subsequently worsen the conditions confronting the Syrian population. The paper contributes to discussions on food security in conflict settings and how sanctions negatively affect civilians in targeted countries.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e12656 |
| Journal | Disasters |
| Volume | 49 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 9 Sept 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jan 2025 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2024 ODI.
Funding
An earlier, shorter, version of this paper (albeit with outdated data) appears as a blog on the website of the World Peace Foundation: https://worldpeacefoundation.org/blog/sanctions-and-food-insecurity-in-syria/. Furthermore, a very limited amount of the data used here was previously published in an article on the use of sanctions as a warfare strategy tool in the Syrian conflict (Kanfash,\u00A02023). This paper, which was first presented during the World Conference on Humanitarian Studies organised by the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA) in November 2023, has benefited from excellent comments by participants at the conference as well as by humanitarian practitioners in Jordan, Syria, and T\u00FCrkiye. This work was supported by the Dutch Research Council (grant number: PGW.23.025).
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Peaceful World Foundation | |
| International Humanitarian Studies Association | |
| Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | PGW.23.025 |
Keywords
- complex emergencies
- donor conditionality
- food (in)security
- sanctions
