Syrian Arab Republic Appeal
Humanitarian Action for Children
UNICEF’s Humanitarian Action for Children appeal helps support the agency’s work as it provides conflict- and disaster-affected children with access to water, sanitation, nutrition, education, health and protection services. Return to main appeal page.
Syrian Arab Republic snapshot
Appeal highlights
- Thirteen years of crisis have upended the lives of children and their families across the Syrian Arab Republic, leaving 15.3 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, including 7 million children. Of the country's 6.8 million internally displaced people, 5.3 million require humanitarian support. Protracted conflict, economic decay, disease outbreaks and multiple earthquakes in early 2023, coupled with mass displacement, widespread damaged infrastructure, limited humanitarian access and climate-related shocks drive these needs.
- In 2024, UNICEF and partners will deliver life-saving assistance while integrating early recovery and resilience-building efforts into all programmes to address the immediate needs of communities to ensure a long-lasting impact on children lives. UNICEF will implement integrated multisectoral programmes that are gender-responsive and disability-inclusive. Priorities are populations and areas with high-severity needs. Cross-cutting commitments on accountability to affected populations and community engagement will be systematized across interventions to enhance programme quality and equity.
- UNICEF requires $401.7 million to provide an essential lifeline to 8.5 million people, including 5.4 million children. This funding requirement is lower than that of the revised 2023 appeal due to prioritization of needs and streamlined earthquake and cholera-related responses adapted to the evolving situation.
Key planned targets
2 million people accessing primary health care in UNICEF-supported facilities
1.7 million primary caregivers receiving infant and young child feeding counselling
2.6 million children supported with educational services and supplies in formal settings
5.3 million people accessing a sufficient quantity and quality of water
Funding requirements for 2024
Country needs and strategy
Humanitarian needs
Children in the Syrian Arab Republic are experiencing the worst effects of an unparalleled and complex emergency. Because of prolonged conflict, public health emergencies, climate-related shocks and mass protracted displacement – and the economic fallout of all of it – 15.3 million people require humanitarian assistance, including 7 million children and 5.3 million internally displaced people.
The earthquakes that hit Tü rkiye and the Syrian Arab Republic in February 2023 aggravated people's long-standing vulnerabilities. In the Syrian Arab Republic alone, more than 8.8 million people, including 3.3 million children, were affected, resulting in nearly 6,000 casualties, more than 12,000 injuries and substantial damage to homes and essential infrastructure.
Socioeconomic decay has pushed more families into poverty, disproportionally affecting women, children and people with disabilities. Eighty-five per cent of households struggle to make ends meet, which increases their reliance on humanitarian aid and negative coping mechanisms – such as child labour and consumption of suboptimal diets – and further limits their access to basic services. More than 40 per cent of hospitals and health facilities are not functioning or are only partially functioning, and public health emergencies – such as the country's ongoing cholera epidemic, where 189,374 suspected cholera cases and 105 associated deaths were reported in 14 governorates between 25 August 2022 and 2 September 2023 – further add to the pressure on the health system. Climate-induced shocks and power supply disruptions intensify water scarcity and food insecurity. Nearly 13.6 million people require access to WASH services and 5.9 million people, including 3.8 million children, require nutritional assistance.
Children are experiencing a protection crisis, with 2,438 grave violations recorded in 2022 9 and 6.3 million children needing protection services. Insecurity and economic hardship heighten human rights violations, fear and psychosocial distress, gender-based violence, child marriage and incidents of sexual exploitation and abuse. Unexploded ordnance contamination is a major concern. Some 6.9 million children and education personnel need emergency education services, including 3.2 million girls, given poverty levels and 7,000 destroyed or damaged schools. Around 2.4 million children are out of school and another 1.6 million children, particularly those with disabilities, are at risk of dropping out.
In the northwest, 4.1 million people have mutilayered humanitarian needs, including 2.9 million internally displaced people, 2 million of whom live in overcrowded camps. Some 3.8 million people need health care, 3.7 million are food insecure and 2.1 million require urgent WASH assistance. Protection risks are paramount, and children need support to realize their right to education. In the northeast, children and women face arbitrary arrest,
UNICEF’s strategy
Under the Whole of Syria approach, UNICEF will continue to deliver on its mandate, prioritizing the populations and areas with high-severity needs and its responsibility for inter-agency coordination as lead of the Nutrition, Education and WASH Clusters/Sectors and the Child Protection Area of Responsibility.
UNICEF will provide life-saving interventions while integrating early recovery and a long-term perspective into all aspects of its humanitarian action, which will include scaling up localization and preparedness to build the resilience of communities and local and national systems to endure crises. UNICEF will implement multisectoral, risk-informed, conflict- and gender-sensitive and disability-inclusive strategies to enhance programme quality and equity.
UNICEF and partners will address the threats to children’s health, nutrition and well-being, ensuring the availability and quality of preventive and curative nutrition services through multisectoral collaboration and community-based service delivery mechanisms. Through fixed and mobile clinics and by helping rebuild local health systems, UNICEF will provide safe, equitable and sustainable access to health services, focusing on preventing and responding to disease outbreaks.
UNICEF will continue shifting its primarily emergency WASH programme into a sustained, community-building response. UNICEF will advance cost-effective infrastructure rehabilitation and repairs 43 that contribute to the sustainability of operations and maintenance and explore such alternative power supply solutions as solar energy, ensuring availability of minimum WASH services.
To tackle the education crisis, and with the goal of building back better, UNICEF will provide a holistic package of education, child protection and adolescent development opportunities. UNICEF and partners will ensure children and adolescents continue to learn through inclusive, equitable and safe access to formal and non-formal education, including early childhood development. Adolescents will play a pivotal role in community engagement through programmes that emphasize life skills and promote social cohesion.
UNICEF and partners will provide specialized child protection prevention and response services to ensure children are safe from violence, abuse and exploitation in their homes, schools and communities. The integrated programme approach will span mental health and psychosocial support, gender-based violence response, gender-responsive positive parenting programmes and explosive ordnance risk education. Cash assistance and social protection interventions remain critical to help families provide for their children.
UNICEF and partners will strive to protect populations from sexual exploitation and abuse by scaling up engagement with the inter-agency PSEA network and the Humanitarian Country Team to ensure functional, safe and accessible reporting mechanisms. Positive social norms and practices, risk reduction behaviours and accountability to affected populations will be promoted. 45 UNICEF will strengthen equity-focused data collection, along with monitoring and evaluation of progammes to inform evidence-based emergency response and better serve the changing needs of
Programme targets
Find out more about UNICEF's work
Highlights
Humanitarian Action is at the core of UNICEF’s mandate to realize the rights of every child. This edition of Humanitarian Action for Children – UNICEF’s annual humanitarian fundraising appeal – describes the ongoing crises affecting children in the Syrian Arab Republic; the strategies that we are using to respond to these situations; and the donor support that is essential in this response.