Bypassing former blunders: grassroot testimonies from Syria’s aid ecosystem prior to al-Assad’s escape

On 15 December 2024, less than 10 days after Bashar al-Assad’s escape to Russia, Geir Otto Pedersen, the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, stated that the country needs immediate humanitarian assistance.

In the years leading up to December 2024, many aid organisations that were internationally funded to operate in/for the country had ceased to exist, either due to lack of funding or to changes in the political landscape. These organisations are now rethinking their funding sources, and thinking about how they can instrumentalise the capacities and skills built up throughout the many years of the conflict to serve the country. While Syrian civil society and diaspora are working on closing the huge needs gap caused by sanctions and the January 2025 suspension of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) programming and funding, international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) are racing to register and open country offices in Damascus to finally be present and represented in the country where many of them had remotely programmed for over a decade.

In this piece, we draw on our long-term research and experience with/as local aid workers in the Syrian crises’ response to offer international actors feedback that may help them avoid the mistakes of the past in what lies ahead for Syria. We focus on two main themes. The first is international organisations’ and funders’ duty of care towards locally recruited staff in an uncertain legal and sociopolitical landscape. The second is how to maximise impact, sustainability and work stability in the context of programmes and projects that are conceived with an end date, and are often disrupted by uncertainties in conflict-ridden and ‘post’-conflict settings. In doing so, we rely on direct quotes that were gathered during our research, to keep the voices of local aid workers front and centre. We complement their words with brief comments that clarify the context and summarise their broader experiences and recommendations.

The knowledge base

Between 2017 and 2023, we conducted interviews with local humanitarians working on the Syrian crises’ response, both in Syria and in the so-called ‘Syria Hub’, consisting of neighbouring Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan, Jordan, Lebanon and Türkiye. The participants accrued experience from and under multiple organisations and contractual arrangements. These ranged from very short-term contracts lasting no longer than a month to lengthier ones that were outcomes of longer projects, and from official employment to partnerships to consultancies. Most participants shared their experiences of being left to their own devices when it came to managing any form of risk they might encounter at or for work.

In an upcoming research article Hassouneh, N. (forthcoming), ‘Risk dumping: humanitarian programming in opposition-held Syria before Al Assad’s run-off’ Journal of Humanitarian Affairs 6.2/3. , Hassouneh uses the concept of risk dumping to refer to the often unintentional top-down dumping of risk on others who are most likely not insured against the risk nor trained to mitigate it. The article explores the absence in the provision of security, safety and care measures for local aid workers in 12 international humanitarian organisations working in what was then opposition-held Syria. With the goal of complementing the article with a more accessible and policy-relevant read in the form of a blog or report, Hassouneh had asked the participants to share what they thought that donors and INGOs could do better.

This piece revolves around answers to this question. It aims to give a voice to the accumulated experiences shared by those who are habitually not considered in operational decisions or policy recommendations. In other words, those who are left out of the conversation. Their perspectives are potentially relevant also beyond the Syrian context: they provide humanitarian practitioners with insights on how to turn debates on localisation and the Grand Bargain agenda into impactful actions that increase equality and justice.

Duty of care? An urgent need for greater monitoring and accountability

Duty of Care (DoC) is a term the aid sector utilises a lot yet does not necessarily implement equally when one looks at local versus international staff. DoC has a multitude of definitions and understandings. However, ‘what unifies definitions of DoC is the ethical, legal, and financial obligations of the employer towards the health, safety, security, and psychological wellbeing of employees and their families. In some versions, DoC also extends to humanitarian partners, volunteers and communities’ (Hassouneh, forthcoming).

Several of the Syrian aid workers interviewed agreed on one main point: DoC for local staff should be an obligation, and one that comes with dedicated budget lines. This clearly hasn’t been the case most recently in Syria. H.J.F., based in the Syria hub, has been employed by the aid sector for over 10 years. He shares the following recommendation regarding DoC towards local partners inside Syria:

DoC should be obligatory, included in the budget from the beginning, from the initial stages of the partnership. We are remotely partnering with people on the ground, without whom, all our organisations will cease to exist. We can cover gas, rent, and schooling for expat families who already take thousands of dollars per month, but we cannot cover a family of a deceased partner with 500 dollars which would cover them for 5 months, unless there is a duty of care budget line. (Hassouneh, forthcoming)

Similarly, M.S.I., S.R.A. and M.H.S., all workers with experience inside and around Syria, recommend making DoC obligatory, with dedicated budget lines. S.R.A. adds:

Budget lines are usually very rigid and using funds for providing care or support to deceased or injured employees and their families is not an option. Such type of support usually falls on the shoulders of colleagues, in an informal manner.

The absence of basic protection is sometimes striking and becomes evident in cases of serious disruptions and accidents, including abrupt termination of work due to heightened conflict or political change. As highlighted in the quote above, in such circumstances the workers and their communities are left to mitigate the damage and compensate for the lack of support under their own steam. N.I.A., who worked in regional offices responding to the Syrian crises, recommends providing clear mitigation measures and scenario planning when it comes to compensating workers inside Syria, and shared the following:

When one part of Syria was in the process of being overtaken by the regime, the Syrian employees in that part of the country were not compensated. They had to work without salaries for a couple of months or so. The organisation was claiming that they cannot find a way to pay them although many other organisations managed to do so even after the takeover. At one point, one of the team members from Syria entered the neighbouring country where the organisation was based for medical treatment for an injury he had sustained during the conflict. After being ignored when asking about pay, he searched for the organisation’s location on Google Maps and visited the regional office unannounced. The management panicked and did everything they could to make him leave the premises. In the end they were paid, but it took months.

S.Y.W., who worked in both Syria and the ‘Hub’, recommends

clear regulation as to what is to happen after the organisation ceases to exist. What happens if a worker leaves the organisation is clear, but what happens if the organisation leaves is not. There must be a commitment towards the employee by the organisation, be it legal support in the country of residence, financial compensation until the employee finds another source of income, support in finding another job in the same sector, or recommendation to and for other organisations.

The lack of DoC implementation is closely linked to issues of exploitation, such as inadequate pay, but also to the lack of monitoring tools by the donors that could enforce accountability to local aid workers. M.T.F., who was a local worker within the aid sector for several years, shares his experience with unfair pay and the absence of donor insight regarding what happens on the ground in projects they fund. He shares that ‘donors must introduce periodic assessments of employment practices, contract terms, actual salary versus agreed upon salary’. He adds:

There are many cases where employees sign contracts stating that they will receive 1,200 USD but in reality, receive 600 or 700 because that is what the management verbally agreed with them before signing the contract. Sometimes they do get the 1,200 but they are obliged to return the 600 in cash to the organisation. But what can they [the workers] do? They have no alternatives, so they do what they are told to do. So, donors need to open their eyes. Organisations need to be monitored more closely.

Impact, sustainability and work stability

Many of the projects funded for the Syria response focused on building the capacity of Syrians, both directly and indirectly. However, the conditions for this capacity -building were almost exclusively top-down, dismissing the knowledge of those in the country or those who can largely understand its culture and language.

For instance, M.S.I. recommends ‘exchange of experiences between humanitarian actors (donors, implementors, INGOs)’ and ‘conducting intensive workshops with local NGOs’. He highlights the need for ‘better understanding of the context between donor and partner to better determine a suitable response depending on dynamics and sudden changes in context’. In other words, what is needed is ‘a response mechanism that corresponds to the context’. He also sheds light on the ‘absence of clear and sustainable interventions and programming, and the sudden cut-offs in funding, and how ‘the requirements by donors do not correspond to the duration of funding and actual implementation’. He adds that donors ‘want to change the whole organisation for a project that is six months long, and they expect an increase in the quality of service in such a short time’.

Along the same lines, S.R.A. states that ‘response and projects should be longer term. Not for 3 or 4 months, as this does not leave room for impact’ and that ‘work stability in terms of longer contracts is a must’. He adds:

We have been working on temporary contracts that do not provide any work stability. In two or three months a project may end, and you are out searching for a new job again. There is no guaranteed job in this field.

M.H.S. shared that:

Once the funding for a project ends there is no guarantee of continuing to work afterwards. There is always a fear of this […] for example one of the NGOs ended the contracts of 150 workers, before the contract end date, due to the sudden cut of funding by the donor […] Work in the sector is good in terms of income, but after projects end, one moves from a source of income to nothing. Living conditions suddenly change. […] The stress of ending the contract is an outcome of bad policy and it affects the whole family not only the worker.

Another participant, J.M.A, who worked on the Syria response from within and outside Syria, recalls how some organisations fail to facilitate an employee’s progression into new roles, or even their ability to apply for other jobs after project completion. He shares, ‘when I requested an experience letter from the INGO, the INGO failed to provide it, despite [me] asking for it multiple times’. And although this point touches upon both DoC and job stability, it reflects how, in some cases, being unable to retrieve a basic document attesting to previous experience can hinder future job prospects and application processes.

A better way forward?

In line with existing research on local aid workers at a global level, this piece highlights the urgency of protecting local staff and partners via clear sets of regulations and best practices even if their countries’ laws provide no reference point in this regard. As the international community still grapples with questions on how to make localisation effective, it is high time to listen carefully to the local workers who will help rebuild Syria. Based on the testimonies above, we make two initial recommendations. It is hoped that they will spur further discussion among practitioners, in the Syrian context and beyond.

The first and most important is that DoC towards local staff should be enforced through a basic and clear set of rules, supported by implementation budgets. Humanitarian organisations should not use legal and administrative grey zones in countries of interventions in order to avoid the ‘burden’ of caring for local staff. For instance, the experience of the workers we spoke to also shows that securing private health insurance or officially contributing to social security remotely and in a conflict-ridden country can be extremely complicated. INGOs and their donors should thus consider compensating employees and partners via monthly payments or instalments. Not doing so can amount to downright exploitation.

Second, donors should adopt monitoring mechanisms based on the direct survey and observation of working conditions on the ground, rather than on mere reporting and well-rehearsed evaluation performances. These should include collecting extensive and detailed feedback from local staff, with adequate confidentiality and safety guarantees, as well as effective sanctioning measures where conditions do not meet at least the most basic decent work standards, even in conflict situations. Listening to workers and upholding their basic rights are essential to making aid more context-aware and impactful.

Nadine Hassouneh is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Tampere University. Elisa Pascucci is a Senior Researcher at Tampere University.

Note: We have used anonymised initials to refer to our respondents, to ensure both their privacy and safety.