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International aid in transitional Syria: traps donors must avoid

Shaban, Fateh
Policy Brief (31/2026)

Bonn: German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23661/ipb31.2026

The collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024 transformed the operating environment for international aid in Syria. Frontlines disappeared, previously in­access­ible areas became accessible and donors began shifting from humanitarian relief towards early recovery, reconstruction and support for refugee return. Yet greater access has not produced a corresponding increase in aid volume. Instead, the transition has co­incided with shrinking humanitarian funding, per­sistent banking constraints, institutional re-central­isa­tion and pressure to redirect resources across the country. The experience of north-west Syria (NWS) offers lessons for navigating this transition. This policy brief connects that experience to national challenges rela­ting to funding, the geographical redistribution of aid and institutional capacity. For more than a decade, the UN- and NGO-led humanitarian response across the Türkiye–Syria border developed localised systems for service delivery, procure­ment, financial transfers and remote account­ability under exceptionally difficult conditions, operating alongside de facto governance structures dominated by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its Syrian Salvation Government. The rapid integration of this system into a Damascus-centred “Whole of Syria” response risks dismantling capacities that remain essential to effective aid delivery. This policy brief identifies four traps that donors should avoid in Syria:

  • A premature transition that combines shrinking humanitarian funding with a rapid shift towards early recovery, reconstruction and support for refugee return before basic needs are met and essential services have improved.
  • Sanctions relief on paper without functioning financial channels: removing formal restrictions while the correspondent banking system and the domestic financial system remain unable to transmit aid and investment reliably.
  • Zero-sum geographical redistribution: extend­ing aid to newly accessible areas by reducing support to still-vulnerable communities, particularly in NWS.
  • Re-centralisation and de-localisation: relocating international operations to Damascus while weak­en­ing Syrian non-governmental organisa­tions (NGOs) and subnational institutions and eroding the expertise developed through the cross-border response.

Donors should support humanitarian relief, early re­covery and reconstruction simultaneously according to conditions on the ground. Donors and their partners should protect essential humanitarian services; estab­lish functional financial channels; strengthen local and subnational delivery capacity; allocate scarce resources transparently according to need across all governorates; and support the return of refugees and internally displaced people only where independent protection and technical assessments confirm that conditions are suitable for return. The central challenge is to ensure that international engagement strengthens rather than dismantles the institutions and operational capacities on which effective recovery depends.

Fateh Shaban is a Research Fellow in the Geopolitics of the Middle East at the School of Economics, Politics and Inter­national Relations, University of Kent, United Kingdom.

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