Syria: Hundreds of thousands of people flee Lebanon, vital food aid blocked

Speaking from Damascus, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Representative in Syria, Asseer Al-Madaien, said the country had experienced a “sharp increase” in the number of people crossing the border from Lebanon – more than 200,000 between March 2 and 27.

“The vast majority, nearly 180,000 people, are Syrians, including Syrian refugees who once fled Syria to seek safety in Lebanon and are now forced to flee again,” he said.

More than 28,000 Lebanese have also crossed into Syria.

Fleeing without taking anything

“Most are people fleeing intensive Israeli bombing,” Ms Al-Madaien told journalists in Geneva. “They arrived exhausted, traumatized and carrying little.”

UNHCR representatives said the agency was preparing as many as 350,000 people to cross into Syria, depending on the course of the conflict.

As the humanitarian impact deepens in the month since Israeli and US airstrikes on Iran began, sparking a wider regional war, supply lines in the Middle East are already severely disrupted.

United Nations World Food Program (WFP) Chain Director of Supply Corinne Fleischer said the agency was concerned about “everything [its] major operation.”

The WFP currently has “70,000 metric tons of war-impacted food…About half is on chartered bulk carriers and the other half is in containers that are in transit or stuck in port and not moving,” he said.

Speaking from Rome, Ms Fleischer clarified that the WFP had no ships in the Strait of Hormuz but was affected by “the ripple effect of what is happening there… ships are stuck in port, not docking in port, not leaving port, containers not being unloaded”.

COVID precedent

WFP officials warn that global supply chain disruptions similar to those that occurred during COVID are taking “four to five months to return to operations once the situation stabilizes”.

Shipping costs soared as carriers avoided the Suez Canal linked to the Middle East wars and had to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope. This has increased travel time by 30 days and has increased fares by 15 to 25 percent, and rising fuel prices have also had a detrimental impact on the company.

Speaking about mitigation measures, Ms. Fleischer explained that the WFP had “requested priority cargo for humanitarian operations” as it is the only UN organization that has its own shipping department that engages directly with shipping companies and ship owners.

He said the agency had successfully negotiated waivers of surcharges imposed by certain at-risk shipping companies and ports in the Middle East, which amounted to between $2,000 to $4,000 per container – which represents a savings of about $1.5 million so far.

Afghan aid delayed

WFP is also rerouting cargo, for example to Afghanistan, where 17 million people are food insecure.

Earlier this year, food aid sourced from Pakistan was impacted by the Pakistan-Afghanistan war and was initially channeled back through Iran, Ms. Fleischer.

“When we are [rerouting] to enter Iran’s Bandar Abbas port, there was a war,” he explained. “We had to place it in Jebel Ali [port] in Dubai and now we will send it by truck from Dubai via Saudi Arabia…That adds about 1,000 euros a tonne and of course another three weeks.”

WFP officials expressed further concerns about Sudan, with 19 million people who are “desperately hungry”, as well as Somalia and South Sudan, where operations are hampered by longer waiting times and higher costs.

“Financing of humanitarian operations, for several years, has not been where it should be,” he said. “We have eroded any buffer reserves. We are living from hand to mouth in this operation.”

With famine in the Sudanese region, “there is no time left”, he stressed. “Our operations and pipeline network do not allow for further three weeks of route changes through the Horn of Africa.”