NGOs slam EU conference on Syria
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – A number of attending NGOs have criticized the European Union’s conference on Syria, which was held in Brussels between June 14-15, for neglecting northeast Syria and focusing unduly on some aggressors over others. It was the seventh conference organized by the EU under the banner of ‘Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region’.
According to Izzaddin Saleh, Director-General of the Synergy Association for Victims, a northeast Syria-based NGO, the EU invited 14 other organizations from the region to participate in the conference, “but most were not able to attend because the EU did not provide the needed logistical support to issue visas to enter Belgium or EU countries,” he said in a statement to North Press.
He added that Turkey’s role as an aggressor was not mentioned during the conference. Bassam al-Ahmad, Director-General for Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ), a documentation center, who also attended the Brussels conference, made similar remarks to North Press. “There was a clear marginalization of every issue related to northeast Syria. They did not talk about security issues, Turkey’s attacks, water, agriculture, or [other] challenges. This exclusion was very visible. Their main problem is that they show themselves as if they work for all of Syria and Syrians, which is not true,” he explained.
One point of contention was the discussions surrounding the humanitarian response to the February earthquake in northwest Syria. According to al-Ahmed, the conference neglected to talk about “the perspective of the people of Afrin or about the crimes, challenges, violations of property rights, discrimination, appropriation.” On June 12, STJ released a report detailing crimes committed against civilians and the systematic theft of earthquake relief materials by Turkish-backed forces in Afrin.
The NGO representatives say that organizers presents a lopsided view of the Syrian conflict. “There was a session about justice where two girls talked well about the violations of the Syrian regime,” al-Ahmed details. “The general view of the session was anti-Syrian regime. Why can victims of the Syrian regime have the right to represent themselves and speak but other victims do not have the right to speak in this platform about their suffering … It is not possible that the EU was not able to invite a victim from among thousands of victims of ISIS or ‘Operation Peace Spring’,” al-Ahmed said, referring to Turkey’s 2019 invasion of northern Syria.
“There can be no solution in Syria without the participation of all parties. This is the thing that states do not understand. If they are truly interested in a sustainable political solution that can guarantee the rights and dignity of all Syrians, all people must participate … [they] have the right to participate in determining their fate. Just like the victims have the right to talk about their suffering,” al-Ahmed explains.
Over 350,000 northeast Syrian residents live in camps. Many more IDPs are spread throughout the cities of the region and are dependent on outside aid for subsistence. The only aid border crossing to Iraq – al-Yaroubiyah – was closed down by a Russian-Chinese veto in 2020. Turkey, the Syrian government, and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq have periodically cut the autonomous region off from the outside world. “None of this was discussed,” Saleh tells North Press.
The conference did not give a true picture of the challenges faced by Syrians, adds al-Ahmed. It “gave the worst version … a misleading, unrealistic, incomprehensive version.”