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Humanitarian Assistance Response Plan for Syria (1 January - 30 June 2013)

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Syria
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Govt. Syria
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  1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The events in Syria since March 2011 have resulted in significant humanitarian needs that have now spread to many areas of the country, and have further grown since the drafting of the revised Humanitarian Assistance Response Plan (HARP) in September 2012. The Government of Syria, in collaboration with UN agencies, is launching a new HARP for the period from 1 January 2013 to the end of June 2013. This plan will serve around four million people, as estimated by the UN, that have been directly or indirectly affected by the current events including the drought, among them two million who have left their homes because of the current situation. As under the previous plans, the directly affected populations include those injured during the events, families who lost their breadwinners or left their home areas as well as relatives, friends and communities hosting them.

The indirect effects of the current events threaten a second major category of Syrians due to multiple effects of the current events. These include primarily: the aggravation of poverty; damage to housing and infrastructure including water and power utilities, schools, medical and other social service facilities, industrial and agricultural infrastructure (including fertilizer production and pharmaceutical industry); shortages of fuels, which affect the whole economy, including electricity and water supplies as well as transportation; disruptions to telecommunications; a rapid shrinkage of the private sector and most importantly the informal sector that employs a large proportion of the population leading to livelihood losses and rising unemployment, including in industry, agriculture and tourism; unsafe movement on major routes in the country and across borders is hindering internal and external transit and trade and inflating prices; the rising costs of imports due to devaluation of the local currency. The effect of economic sanctions is further aggravating the situation, in particular as international transactions become more difficult for both the public and the private sectors. Sanctions also significantly affected the import of fuel derivatives, which created shortages in the local market and resulted in the increase of prices of diesel and heating oil, as well as overall living costs for families.

The need for humanitarian assistance in affected areas is increasing in order to save lives and to avoid a large segment of the Syrian population falling into destitution and seeing a further decline in their health, psychological and nutritional status.

All humanitarian assistance is, and will continue to be, delivered with full respect to the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic during the implementation of this Response Plan.
Decisions on strategic or logistical issues including field office locations should be done after formal consultations with the government in order to receive the clearance and accreditation.

This revised Response Plan will be implemented according to UN General Assembly Resolution 46/182, titled “Strengthening of the Coordination of Humanitarian Emergency Assistance of the United Nations” and the Guiding Principles in its annex.

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: To learn more about OCHA's activities, please visit https://www.unocha.org/.