March 2025 marks 14 years since a devastating crisis began in Syria; 14 years since what began as peaceful demonstrations escalated into a country-wide civil war that forced millions of Syrian families to flee their homes. Characterised by its complexity, there was no frontline to the fighting and multiple international parties were involved. Civilians bore the brunt, caught in the middle of shifting power dynamics and territories, not knowing where it would be safe for them and their families. The conflict transformed Syria into one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world, with ramifications that affected dozens of countries over the years. Here we attempt to capture the story of the Syria crisis, and how Islamic Relief stood with its vulnerable communities.
Thousands of Syrians fled the country in 2011, seeking refuge in neighbouring countries. In this image, families are arriving in Dabbabieh in northern Lebanon, near the Syrian border
Inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, peaceful protests began in the cities of Damascus and Aleppo in March 2011. Many people were unhappy about the high levels of unemployment and perceived widespread corruption in the country. The peaceful demonstrations were met with swift and violent opposition however, and protests erupted nationwide. The conflict rapidly escalated throughout 2011 and grew in size, garnering international involvement. By May 2011, thousands of people had fled to neighbouring countries – even greater numbers had been displaced within Syria.
In early 2012, the United Nations held the first peace talks of the conflict, led by Kofi Annan in Geneva. Following the Houla massacre in May 2012 however, these peace talks collapsed, and the conflict descended into a nationwide civil war. By the end of 2012 the United Nations estimated 70,000 had been killed, with 1 million Syrians having fled to neighbouring countries. Millions more had been internally displaced and approximately one-quarter of the population was in need of humanitarian aid. In 2012, Islamic Relief gained humanitarian access to Syria, implementing 54 humanitarian and relief projects worth more than £10 million. We were able to reach more than 1 million beneficiaries across Syria, as well as refugees in Jordan, Türkiye, Iraq and Lebanon.
Our teams battled through the heavy Syrian winter to deliver aid to those who had fled violence in the cities.
In 2013, we published a report detailing the life-saving aid we had provided to people suffering in Syria’s brutal conflict See report here
By the end of 2013, 3 years of conflict, insecurity, and instability in almost all areas of Syria had resulted in a critical humanitarian crisis. More groups emerged to join the fighting. More communities were displaced. Bombs were frequently set off in major cities resulting in the destruction of entire city suburbs, such as in Aleppo. At this point in time, more than 9 million were in need of aid, while 100,000 people had been killed. As the conflict spilled into another year, Islamic Relief released a report detailing the support we had delivered to vulnerable communities in Syria. In 2013 alone, we delivered 87 projects inside Syria and neighbouring countries, including a £5 million winterisation appeal to respond the urgent needs of Syrians in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.
For the first time since 1953, Syria held presidential elections - the results of which were widely deemed to be undemocratic and received criticism from around the world. 2014 would turn out to be the bloodiest year of the conflict, with more than 110,000 individuals losing their lives – 30,000 of whom were civilians. Islamic Relief signed a landmark agreement with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to secure food aid and emergency sanitary kits for over 70,000 people in the besieged camp of Yarmouk, home to Palestinian refugees, and other areas around Damascus facing severe hardship.
As the conflict continued to cause widespread destruction in Syria, we managed to reach 4 million vulnerable people with vital aid such as food, medicine, tents, and milk for babies
In 2015, Islamic Relief also mourned the loss of one of our own as Nebras Elhelow, a young Syrian volunteer with Islamic Relief (pictured here delivering food support in northern Syria), lost his life aged only 27 following massive injuries suffered as the result of an air strike.
Shaped by international involvement since the beginning of the conflict, the ramifications of the civil war in Syria began to be felt around the world. A complex and catastrophic refugee crisis began to unfold across Europe, fuelled by instability in the Middle East and North Africa, and by the ongoing conflict in Syria. The largest refugee crisis since World War II saw more than 1.3 million refugees request asylum across Europe – the majority of whom had fled war-torn Syria. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 3,700 migrants died making the perilous journeys to cross the Mediterranean in 2015. In response to the crisis, Islamic Relief launched an emergency appeal to support refugees in countries like Greece, Italy, Sweden and Germany. In 2015, Islamic Relief also mourned the loss of one of our own as Nebras Elhelow, a young Syrian volunteer with Islamic Relief, lost his life aged only 27 following massive injuries suffered as the result of an air strike.
A second attempt at peace talks were made in Astana, Kazakhstan. De-escalation zones were agreed upon, which temporarily reduced the violence. Eventually, the peace talks failed, and the fighting escalated, with some of the most vicious and violent battles of the entire conflict. The city of Aleppo suffered months of brutal, constant bombardment. Horrific chlorine attacks were reported and hundreds of thousands of civilians were trapped with minimal food and fuel in blockaded areas. Basic infrastructure and health care facilities were obliterated with widespread reports that all hospitals in eastern Aleppo had been destroyed by air strikes. Islamic Relief were one of the few remaining humanitarian actors remaining in Aleppo, delivering vital aid despite the immense difficulties and risks facing our aid workers. In 2016, our £26.6 million emergency response reached more than 3.37 million vulnerable Syrians across 4 countries.
In 2016, the brutal, barbaric assault on the city of Aleppo shocked the world. The United Nations described Aleppo as: “Well into its terrible descent into the pitiless and merciless abyss of a humanitarian catastrophe unlike any we have witnessed in Syria. Syria is bleeding. Its citizens are dying. We all hear their cry for help.”
2017 marked our second year of collaborating with the UN World Food Programme (WFP) to distribute food aid in Syria – a partnership that reached 120,000 people throughout the year
The town of Khan Shaykhun, in Idlib governorate, was the location for one of the most horrific attacks of the entire Syrian conflict. A nerve agent attack led to the death of more than 100 people, including 32 children. The cities of Raqqa and Douma also saw large scale military operations in 2017, leaving both cities unrecognisable and barely habitable. Islamic Relief delivered vital emergency medicine and medical supplies to health facilities in Aleppo, Idlib and Homs. We also funded over a dozen dialysis centres, 4 mobile health units, supported 16 paediatric health centres and set up a new facility serving thousands of kidney patients. In Douma Hospital we paid the salaries of medical staff so they could keep working during the siege and trained over 150 health workers, doctors, midwives and healthcare managers to deliver better services. Our support allowed medical staff to keep working during the 2017 siege in Douma, Syria.
Another round of peace talks failed, leading to the Eastern Ghouta crisis, a series of escalating bombing campaigns in Eastern Ghouta, an area in the Damascus Countryside home to 400,000 civilians. The attacks left several hundreds dead and thousands injured. The near 2-month long siege reduced the region of Eastern Ghouta to rubble. Amnesty International described the crisis as “a flagrant war crime”. In 2018 we supported 1.6 million people in Syria, as well as refugees in neighbouring countries.
Islamic Relief responded to the Eastern Ghouta crisis by supporting 1,500 families with food parcels and baked bread bags. We worked with partners to deliver blankets, sheets, buckets, containers for water, cooking items, soap and fuel for heating to help people cope with the brutal Syrian winter
It took 10 years of hard work for Abdel Salam to build a home for his family in southern Syria. And just a moment to lose it. “It does not matter if you are a child or adult, a man or a woman. All of us were scared. We had no choice: stay and die or leave all you have behind.” After fleeing to Jordan, Islamic Relief arranged for two of Abdel Salam’s children to have their tonsils removed after they developed tonsillitis
A deadly new wave of violence erupted, with the cities of Idlib and Hama suffering the heaviest bombing in years – including reported phosphorus attacks. With the conflict entering its 8th year, the horrors inflicted by the relentless violence showed no sign of stopping. Millions had been forced to flee their homes and their country, a generation of children missed out on vital years of education and tens of thousands of innocent civilians had been killed. And still, bombs continued to fall. By the end of 2019, the 8 years of conflict had left a staggering 11.7 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. Islamic Relief released a ‘8 years of crisis report’, detailing how we had supported the vulnerable communities of Syria since the conflict began, and how we were going to help over the next half a decade.
A tenuous ceasefire was brokered which saw a reduction in the intensity of the fighting, but not an end to the conflict, which slowly disappeared from Western headlines. But within Syria, an already exhausted health system was pushed to the brink when Covid-19 arrived in March 2020, threatening to overwhelm the country. Our response to the pandemic reaching Syria was immediate. We redoubled our efforts to equip health facilities with items such as gloves, masks, and sterilising wipes. We also sterilised public spaces, distributed hygiene kits and food parcels to vulnerable Syrian families and raised awareness of practices to improve hygiene and prevent the spread of infection.
Islamic Relief aid workers fit a young boy with a face mask at an internally displaced persons camp on the Syria-Türkiye border
We published ‘Syria’s Devastating Decade’, a publication looking at our wide-ranging operations in Syria, and surrounding countries
A grim milestone. It had now been 10 years since the conflict in Syria began. A devastating decade where the Syrian people were faced with unthinkable levels of hardship and loss. The conflict that began in 2011 had become the "worst man-made disaster since the Second World War", as described by the United Nations. The numbers in 2021 were staggering: hundreds of thousands of people had been killed, 6.2 million people were displaced within Syria and 5.6 million refugees had fled abroad. Since the onset of the crisis, we had invested over £350 million in delivering wide-ranging humanitarian programming in Syria and neighbouring countries. Where many organisations pulled out in 2020, we remained. Our incredible staff took on enormous challenges, often at great personal sacrifice, to assist vulnerable people.
We stood in sorrow and solidarity when children related to an Islamic Relief aid worker were among the civilians killed by an airstrike in Idlib. 4 children, aged between 2 and 8 years old, were at home when the bombs fell just after dawn. “These tragic deaths are felt by the whole Islamic Relief family. In their short lives these young children had already had to flee their old home to try and escape the violence, but there is nowhere truly safe. 11 years into the crisis, the children of Idlib are still not safe even in their own homes,” said Ahmed Mahmoud*, Islamic Relief’s Country Director in Syria at the time. While we had been providing life-saving aid since the start of the Syrian crisis, even after 11 long, heart-breaking years, we felt every tragic death just as acutely.
In 2022, our Ramadan food distribution support programme reached more than 70,000 people within Syria, helping ease the burden on families affected by the ongoing crisis
2023 was our biggest ever year of support for Syria. We launched 32 humanitarian projects, many in response to earthquake, reaching more than 1,780,000 people
Syria was rocked by a series of enormous earthquakes in February 2023, forcing communities already reliant on humanitarian aid even deeper into poverty. A massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck near the Türkiye-Syria border, followed quickly by a 7.7-magnitude quake hours later, and thousands of aftershocks in the weeks and months that followed. Syria’s northwest was hardest hit. The affected area was home to thousands of people already displaced by conflict, some of whom have had to move yet again. Displacement and demand for shelter was so high that new temporary camps became overcrowded almost immediately, and waterborne diseases spread quickly. The devastating earthquakes combined with 13 years of exhausting conflict, meant that 70% of the country’s population was in need of humanitarian aid in 2023.
After 14 long years of conflict, the end came fast. The most significant military escalation since 2020, saw the changing of territories, an end to a regime and a conclusion to more than 13 years of conflict. The violence in November 2024 triggered a mass displacement from western rural Aleppo and eastern rural Idlib to safer regions in northern and western Idlib and northern Aleppo. While a historic event that offered Syrians a glimpse of a more prosperous future, thoughts quickly turned to the recovery of the country. Almost 14 years of horrific crisis had left the country in ruins, with a devastated economy and barely functioning critical infrastructure.
Islamic Relief immediately launched a £10 million appeal for funds to expand our work, while our aid workers began travelling to newly accessible cities such as Damascus, Aleppo, Hama, Homs and beyond, to assess urgent and immediate needs
A new future for Syria. While the end of the conflict has offered some semblance of a new dawn for the country, the reality is that the future for Syria remains uncertain. It is a country of ruins and rubble. The road to recovery will be long, costly and no doubt painful, but it is a process that must be led by the Syrian people. The international community must stand with the Syrian people, offering not just aid, but also the chance to heal and rebuild with dignity. Islamic Relief has been supporting the people of Syria since 2011, and we will continue to help them as they embark on the enormous task of rebuilding their shattered lives and communities.