Unified Aid Bureau Faces Major Challenges in Eastern Ghouta

Currently, the region around Damascus known as Eastern Ghouta does not have the infrastructure necessary to provide for a decent living. With no work available, most residents rely on aid to survive. Since the start of the fighting in the area at the beginning of 2012, most residents lost their jobs due to the shelling and invasions by government forces that were accompanied by theft and looting.

This is the tragic reality that pushed activists to establish relief organizations to fill the growing needs. As the work increased, conflicts began to appear between the aid workers and between the various aid organizations due to differing strategies and competition between individuals and groups. These issues were dealt with by establishing coalitions for aid and relief organizations. Some succeeded while others failed. Eventually, the aid organizations reached an agreement to form an umbrella group for organizing the cooperation of relief organizations. The group is called the Unified Aid Bureau.

The Unified Aid Bureau in Eastern Ghouta was established in 2012. The group focuses on coordinating the aid groups that provide and distribute food and medical aid to the area’s population of 2.2 million people.

The Unified Aid Bureau now manages local aid groups in Eastern Ghouta, which have become satellite offices of the bureau.

There are now 59 such satellite offices in Ghouta’s four administrative regions: Central, Marj, Southern and Northern.

“We were able to create real unity despite the disagreements,” said Ahmad, 28, the media and public relations officer for the Bureau. “It started with a simple exchange of ideas and expertise, and then evolved into the idea of unity, since Ghouta is still one region.”

Ahmad believes that the reason he and his colleagues were drawn to the idea of unity was the reality of internal displacement and the mixing of people from the central areas with the displaced from the peripheries of Ghouta, which made previous administrative divisions of towns unrealistic.

According to Ahmad, there was also a need to organize local aid organizations to be able to better communicate with the opposition-led National Coalition and donors.

Several things made this unity possible. A specialized census and documentation team created an information bank with the names of victims, prisoners, the disabled, and the wounded in Eastern Ghouta. According to the media officer, the Bureau covers 85 per cent of the food needs of the region.

Imad, 26, lost his job and house in Ain Tarma a year ago. He maintains that the Unified Bureau has not distributed anything at all in the region, and that the city’s residents rely on aid from its local council and independent activists. The satellite office of the Bureau in Ain Tarma responded that they are carrying out their duties as best they can, and that supplies are sparse and the needs are great.

Ward, 30, a volunteer activist at the Unified Bureau’s Harasta Aid Office, complains about the lack of aid supplies and says that the Unified Bureau offers only enough aid to cover a fraction of the needs of those displaced from Harasta in the nearby town of Masraba.

“I always try to secure alternate sources of funding for aid through my contacts – even with that we cannot help many,” she said. “Some people protested in front of our office and accused us of denying aid to the people.”

Ward says it’s not unusual to find people in Ghouta who are frustrated with the amount of aid the Unified Bureau is able to provide.

Youssef, 25, an independent photographer, believes that the Unified Bureau is doing all it can to ameliorate people’s suffering, but it is impossible to fulfil all of Ghouta’s needs.

Mohammad, 30, a dentist living in Saqaba, says that the Unified Bureau did not distribute anything in the city for the past four months, which led a number of residents to attack its warehouse. They found infant milk and diapers that had not been distributed. Ahmad, the media officer for the Unified Bureau, replied that the milk available in Ghouta since the start of the siege is unfit for child consumption.

“The warehouses were raided for political reasons by people paid by the regime,” he said. He added that their warehouses have been empty since the start of the year.

According to the media source, the development wing of the Bureau planted and distributed a small amount of corn, and has now begun to plant wheat as part of a strategic plan for all of Ghouta’s towns. They are in communication with international organizations and donor agencies to begin the project. The Bureau is also waiting for funding to begin a project recycling garbage into organic fertilizer.

The Bureau is supported by many different bodies, such as the National Syrian Coalition, as well as several non-governmental organizations and individual donors. Representatives of the Bureau say they are vigilant about disclosing its activities, projects, and sources of funding on its Facebook page. This falls under the purview of Ahmad and his team, who are currently addressing international public opinion by translating their reports into various foreign languages and calling on international organizations to place pressure on the Syrian government to open humanitarian corridors for food and medication.

Organizationally, each of the Bureau’s offices in the four regions consists of a board of directors and an executive board which oversees the work. The board of directors for the Unified Bureau consists of the board director and two members from each region elected by their offices. Employees are hired to carry out the projects after job openings are announced on Facebook and throughout the cities.

The majority of the aid offices’ work is carried out by volunteers such as Ward, who had been working in relief for more than two years. She then began to help the residents of Ghouta after the regime withdrew from the area. Ward suffers from the pressures of working without a salary, which she says she continues to do because she cannot bring herself to turn away from her responsibilities towards her society.

“You can call me and many others in this field stupid. This is thankless work with no money, and we beg for the sake of others,” she said.

Ward claims that organizations no longer want to fund relief work, but prefer instead to fund employment generating projects to prevent people from becoming dependent. Even though working under the conditions of a siege is very difficult, residents have needs that the Unified Bureau and non-governmental organizations active in the region are unable to cover. This makes hunger a daily pain that residents of besieged Ghouta must suffer.