Government coopting aid, says rights group report

BEIRUT — The Syrian government is coopting humanitarian aid and reconstruction assistance and sometimes using it to “entrench repressive policies,” an international rights group said Friday, calling on donors and investors to ensure their contributions are used for the good of the Syrian people.

Human Rights Watch said in the 91page report released in Geneva that the Syrian government has developed a policy and legal framework to divert “reconstruction resources to fund its atrocities, punish those perceived as opponents, and benefit those loyal to it.”

Syria’s civil war, now in its ninth year, has killed some 400,000 people, wounded more than a million and displaced half the country’s population, including 5 million who fled as refugees, mostly to neighboring countries. Large parts of the country are totally destroyed and the government estimates reconstruction will cost some $200 billion dollars and last 15 years.

Many Syrians rely on aid to survive amid poverty and lack of food and medicine in parts of the country that had a prewar population of 23 million.

“While seemingly benign, the Syrian government’s aid and reconstruction policies are being used to punish perceived opponents and reward its supporters,” said Lama Fakih, acting Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

“The Syrian government’s aid framework undermines human rights, and donors need to ensure they are not complicit in the government’s human rights violations,” Fakih said.

The report found that in extreme cases, reconstruction projects that rehabilitate infrastructure of “abusive government agencies can facilitate abuses by empowering them to continue forcibly displacing, torturing, and arbitrarily detaining individuals.”