Syrian refugees swiftly deported from Turkey to northern Syria not only face security risks, but struggle to settle their affairs—sell cars, shutter businesses, close bank accounts—from outside the country.
Villages on the line of contact between regime and Turkish-backed opposition forces in the southern Afrin countryside live under constant threat of unpredictable shelling. The volatile security situation leaves families choosing between sending their children to school, despite the risks, or depriving them of an education in the hopes of keeping them safe.
As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights turns 75, Syrian human rights activist and legal researcher Mansour al-Omari calls on the United Nations to take action against a “pandemic” of impunity, including appointing a Special Rapporteur on Impunity for international crimes.
Amid fears of war between Israel and Hamas spiraling into a regional conflagration, analysts weigh the impact of regional players and assess the likelihood of another front in Syria.
Damascus continues to outwardly ignore Suwayda’s uprising—the longest, most organized and widespread protests in the southern province’s recent history—while demonstrators believe their movement can hold strong.
The use of private generators for electricity has been widespread for years in Syria, but expanded around Damascus in recent months amid signs of regime authorities moving to increasingly codify and regularize the informal trade.
Across Daraa province, groundwater is receding deeper into the earth. On top of climate factors like rising temperatures and fluctuating or delayed rainfall, human activity is taking a toll: Thousands of unlicensed wells have been drilled in recent years due to a lack of state oversight and a struggling public water network.
Starting in August, 120,000 Syrians living in Jordan’s refugee camps will lose one third of their World Food Program assistance, the latest in a series of aid cuts amid an “unprecedented funding crisis.”
In Afrin, there is a widespread trade in properties belonging to displaced residents known as “cost houses,” which are sold by Ankara-backed military factions and civilians for “dirt cheap” prices: the cost of repairs.
One month after the Pylos shipwreck, only 25 of 82 bodies recovered from the sea have been identified—a challenging process that requires DNA samples to be collected across multiple countries. In Syria, authorities have still not authorized DNA collection from relatives of the missing.
