Aid cuts deepen waste and water crisis in Syria’s northern camps

IDLIB — Umm Nidal sits outside her tent in northern Idlib, laundering a large pile of clothes by hand. The water in the large bucket beside her is precious, the fruit of a difficult journey to a well 200 meters away from where she lives—the al-Naseem camp in the village of Harbnoush.

The mother of eight has been carrying water since the Syrian aid organization Takaful Al Sham stopped supplying the camp earlier this year. Without easy access to water, “the simplest daily tasks are exhausting,” she told Syria Direct. 

The situation in al-Naseem camp mirrors that of other camps sheltering hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people along Syria’s northwestern border with Turkey. 

For years, humanitarian organizations shouldered the task of providing essential services and improving infrastructure in camps in northwestern Syria, where six million people lived, half of them internally displaced. The former Idlib-based Syrian Salvation Government also provided some services, while overseeing organizations’ work, before the regime fell on December 8, 2024.

When the Assad regime fell last December, the primary obstacle to return disappeared but returns from the northwestern camps remain limited. As of March 27, 158,000 people have left, according to a report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Residents of northwestern Syria have felt marginalized, with declining services—especially in the camps—since the regime fell and the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-backed Salvation Government was tasked with forming a temporary caretaker government. 

The situation in the camps took a turn for the worse in January, when the United States suspended most foreign aid programs for 90 days before ultimately canceling 83 percent of them. Syria is among the countries most impacted by the US aid cuts. 

Water, sanitation and waste removal projects shut down as a result, ushering in a new crisis for camp residents, especially those who cannot yet return home to destroyed communities such as Homs city. 

Support cuts have impacted 320 camps in northwestern Syria, Mahmoud Qaziz, head of the Water and Sanitation Department at the Idlib Directorate of Social Affairs and Labor, told Syria Direct. Some 773 camps now need water and sanitation services, he added. 

Residents of those camps have to buy water from private tanker trucks, at a weekly cost of around 600 Turkish lira ($16 at the exchange rate of TRY 38.26 to the dollar). This is more than most can afford, Nihad Fayez al-Ali, the director of al-Naseem camp, said. Al-Ali is himself displaced from the village of Khirbet Khawin in the eastern Maarat al-Numan countryside. 

His camp’s 1,200 residents used to receive drinking water from Takaful Al Sham, which provided four liters of water for each person, he explained. 

The water crisis is just one of the challenges facing residents of the northern camps, where sanitation services have also been hit by funding cuts. Garbage is no longer transported regularly, and piles up inside the camps. Sewage pits overflow, sending waste seeping into some tents, residents told Syria Direct. 

With waste piling up and no easy access to water for washing, illness and “skin diseases, such as leishmaniasis, spread alongside insects like flies and mosquitoes and respiratory infections from the foul odors,” al-Ali said. As summer approaches and temperatures rise, he fears “the crisis will get worse.” 

Women most impacted

“Before Syria was liberated, we received enough water to bathe, wash and clean inside and around the tent,” Umm Nidal said. “Now, we count every drop of water after the organization stopped filling the camp’s water tanks.” 

Umm Nidal’s children now bathe once a week. Sometimes, she uses a damp cloth to clean their hands and feet to save water. She uses less water to clean the tent, too, since “obtaining water has become difficult and expensive.” 

Khadija Awad al-Yousef, a teacher who lives in the Majd 3 camp in Atma, is in a similar position. She worries about the water crisis deepening and diseases spreading as summer approaches. Her family of 11 uses water sparingly, “to save as much as possible.” 

A 2023 UN report noted that women and girls bear the brunt of water and sanitation crises, as they are “primarily responsible for water collection in 7 out of 10” households without “water supplies on the premises.”

Environmental waste hazard

With declining support for sanitation projects, the outskirts of camps and nearby roads have become ad hoc dumps, where piles of garbage build up. 

“Garbage accumulates day after day, which is what worries us the most at the moment, especially with increasing cases of diarrhea among residents,” al-Yousef said. She lamented the “awful odors and gathering insects and rodents, putting thousands of families’ health at risk.” 

Al-Yousef pointed to a “lack of alternatives from the authorities to deal with this waste.” Some youth in her camp organized an initiative to “remove the garbage before Eid al-Fitr” at the end of March, with each family contributing TRY 100 ($2.60). However, such initiatives are not sustainable “since many residents can’t secure the required amount,” she said. 

Dr. Hussein Aleiwi, a gastroenterologist at Idlib Central Hospital, warned of the spread of serious diseases in the camps “due to the scarcity of clean water and buildup of waste.” The worsening “health situation threatens the lives of the population, especially children,” he added. 

“Most of the cases we see are children suffering from severe diarrhea and dehydration due to the lack of clean water and personal hygiene,” Aleiwi said. “Contaminated water has caused the spread of serious intestinal diseases, most notably cholera, acute diarrhea and hepatitis A,” alongside “a notable increase” in skin infections such as scabies and boils. 

“Fumes and poisonous gases emitted by the accumulated garbage have caused a marked increase in respiratory diseases, especially among people with asthma and chronic respiratory illnesses,” he added. 

Aleiwi warned that the environment of the camps, with “poor sanitation and the spread of insects, is a breeding ground for the emergence of parasitic diseases such as leishmaniasis and intestinal worms.” He called on the authorities and humanitarian organizations to “urgently intervene to improve water and sanitation services and limit environmental pollution to preserve the health of camp residents.” 

Weak response

Camp residents are calling on government agencies and humanitarian organizations to solve the waste crisis and provide sustainable water supplies—by resuming previous support projects, digging wells or installing water networks within the camps. 

Camp managers have contacted officials in Syria’s new administration, who have promised to take action, but the problem persists, one camp manager told Syria Direct. 

On April 21, the Syrian Civil Defense (White Helmets) announced it removed garbage from Atma camps and opened a sewage drainage channel in al-Amal camp, in the northern Idlib town of Kafr Lusin.

In mid-April, some organizations announced they resumed a hygiene project in Atma after a pause of around a month and a half. Murhaf Jadoud, a journalist and photographer who lives in the camps, told Syria Direct the response only covered Atma, while the al-Karama camps continue to face a waste and water crisis. 

The current response does not match the “scale of the crisis threatening the lives of thousands of people, especially children and the elderly,” Ali Said al-Wardan, who is displaced from the northwestern Hama countryside’s Jabal Shahshabou to the Atma camps, told Syria Direct. 

While camp residents have adapted to “declining aid support in the past two years due to reduced funding,” they cannot adapt to “the stoppage of the service sector, which includes water, hygiene and sanitation,” al-Wardan added. 

Commenting on that, Qaziz from the Directorate of Social Affairs and Labor said the current Syrian government is “coordinating with local and international humanitarian agencies to secure the necessary support.” Damascus is “facilitating the work and providing them with [information on] humanitarian needs and statistics to gauge the support required, as well as identifying the places most in need,” he said. 

As part of the response, the Ihsan Relief and Development organization launched a project in March to provide drinking water. The project aims to transport, sterilize and distribute water from tested wells, as well as to extend water networks to camps, Othman al-Mansour, a team leader at the organization, told Syria Direct. 

Ihsan currently provides around 3,500 cubic meters of drinking water a day  “to around 30 camps in the Idlib area, and 20 camps and neighborhoods in the al-Bab area of northern Aleppo,” al-Mansour added.

He emphasized that the role of the international community and organizations is vital to sustain sanitation projects by “providing the necessary support to organizations in this sector” to “ensure the beneficiaries have continued access to clean water until they are able to return to their homes.” 

This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.