BEIRUT: The Syrian government is co-opting humanitarian aid and reconstruction assistance and sometimes using it to “entrench repressive policies,” an international rights group said Friday, calling on donors and investors to ensure their contributions are used for the good of the Syrian people.
Human Rights Watch said in the 91-page report released in Geneva that the Syrian government has developed a policy and legal framework to divert “reconstruction resources to fund its atrocities, punish those perceived as opponents, and benefit those loyal to it.”
Syria’s civil war, now in its ninth year, has killed some 400,000 people, wounded more than a million and displaced half the country’s population, including 5 million who fled as refugees, mostly to neighboring countries. Large parts of the country are totally destroyed and the government estimates reconstruction will cost some $200 billion dollars and last 15 years.
Many Syrians rely on aid to survive amid poverty and lack of food and medicine in parts of the country that had a pre-war population of 23 million.
“While seemingly benign, the Syrian government’s aid and reconstruction policies are being used to punish perceived opponents and reward its supporters,” said Lama Fakih, acting Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
“The Syrian government’s aid framework undermines human rights, and donors need to ensure they are not complicit in the government’s human rights violations,” Fakih said.
The report notes one case in which an unnamed UN agency decided to partner with a local group founded by a member of the pro-government National Defense Forces — which the opposition blames for major atrocities — to implement a project. HRW says despite warnings, the UN agency moved forward only to discover six months later that the local partner never implemented the project, despite receiving money from the UN
It also mentions, without giving names, senior government officials who own stakes in various businesses and are known to fund “abusive entities,” such as the pro-government NDF. The report warns investors and donors that there is a risk to becoming involved in these sectors because they might indirectly be working or funding abusive individuals or entities.
“As the number of international humanitarian organizations seeking to register and transfer their operations to Damascus increases, the risk of a slippery slope is increasingly significant,” the report warned.
The report found that in extreme cases, reconstruction projects that rehabilitate infrastructure of “abusive government agencies can facilitate abuses by empowering them to continue forcibly displacing, torturing, and arbitrarily detaining individuals.”
Rights group says Syria co-opting humanitarian efforts
Rights group says Syria co-opting humanitarian efforts
- “The Syrian government’s aid framework undermines human rights, and donors need to ensure they are not complicit in the government’s human rights violations”
Israel MPs advance bill on Orthodox control of Western Wall
- Bill is the latest twist in the clash between Netanyahu’s coalition govt and the supreme court
JERUSALEM: Israeli lawmakers on Wednesday advanced a bill that would place the Western Wall under the exclusive authority of the Chief Rabbinate, effectively restricting non-Orthodox worship at the site’s mixed-gender prayer section.
Located in the Old City of Jerusalem, occupied by Israel in 1967, the Western Wall is the last remnant of the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
It is the holiest site at which Jews are permitted to pray by the rabbinate.
The plaza includes three prayer areas — the largest for men, another for women, and a smaller mixed area which is disapproved of by the official Israeli rabbinate, dominated by the ultra-Orthodox.
A bill introduced by far-right lawmaker Avi Maoz that would give the Chief Rabbinate full authority over all sections passed a preliminary parliamentary reading on Wednesday, with 56 lawmakers voting in favor and 47 against.
The legislation would define any activity contrary to the rabbinate’s directives — including non-Orthodox forms of worship — as a “desecration.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not present for the vote.
At the heart of the dispute lies the prayer area known as Ezrat Yisrael, established to accommodate mixed-gender worship.
Several non-Orthodox Jewish movements — predominant among Jewish communities in the US but a small minority in Israel — worship at the site but complain that it is hard to access and poorly laid out.
Seeking to make a gesture to the American Jewish community, a previous Netanyahu government had voted in 2016 for establishing the mixed-gender area, but backtracked the following year under pressure from its ultra-Orthodox allies.
As such, the mixed space was established but not developed.
The bill advanced on Wednesday is the latest twist in the clash between Netanyahu’s coalition government, one of the most right-wing in Israel’s history, and the Supreme Court, whose powers the government has sought to curtail since it took office in 2022.
Last week the court ordered the government and Jerusalem municipality to act on long-delayed plans to develop and improve the mixed-gender section, including issuing building permits that had been stalled for nearly a decade.
The court did not directly rule on theological matters but emphasized that prior government commitments could no longer remain indefinitely suspended.
In response, Justice Minister Yariv Levin urged lawmakers to support Maoz’s bill in order to block what he described as unacceptable interference by the top court in religious affairs.
