Iraq News

ICRC chief sees Syria aid shift towards 'rehabilitation'

Providing humanitarian aid in Syria looks set to shift increasingly away from emergency, life-saving assistance towards rehabilitating devastated areas to help Syrians return home, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Wednesday (May 2nd).

Peter Maurer said the conflict appeared to be entering a new stage, with fewer "big-battle" moments and perhaps even a chance to provide displaced Syrians with a sense of normalcy after seven years of violence, AFP reported.

"Syria to us looks very different from Syria last year or from Syria two years ago," Maurer said.

As the situation in many parts of the country appears to be stabilising, Maurer said he expected to see a shift away from a pure focus on emergency assistance towards reestablishing services in areas people want to return to.

"For us it is just important that we get the rehabilitation thing going," he said.

Maurer pointed out that Syria now appeared to be split into fairly clearly defined territories, and said the "big actors" seemed ready to work towards "consensus to stop the war and to go into a phase of more tranquility".

"I have the impression we are at a little bit of a threshold moment," he said, adding that though the situation could still spiral in a "dangerous" direction, "we are entering the post-big battle era".

The nature of the assistance will evolve in many places away from pure emergency assistance towards "protection activities", he said, such as helping to re-establish basic services and helping people find lost family members.

ICRC said it had received some 13,000 tracing requests from people looking for loved ones since the start of the conflict, with the number of requests soaring 25% in 2017.

This increase, Maurer said, indicated that people were no longer focused only on emergency needs but could concentrate more on broader necessities.

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