UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : Press Conference: IOM Director General Amy Pope on Syria

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Welcome to the press briefing of the UN Information Service here in Geneva.

Today is the 20th of December and actually this is the last briefing of the year.

And so for that briefing we are very happy and, and, and, and honoured to have with us Mrs Sammy Pope, the Director General of IOM, who is here.

As usual, we will have a sort of a prequel to the briefing and we will hear from Mrs Pope on her recent travel to Syria.

Then I will open the floor to question.

Then we will stop for a few minutes in order to let Mrs Pope leave.

And then we will go back into the briefing with the agenda that you should have just received.

So there will be more about Syria, but for the moment, I'd like to give the floor to Mrs Pope and to hear from her, her initial remarks, and then I'll open the floor to questions.

Thank you very much.

You have the floor.

Good morning, everybody, and happy holidays.

It's very, very great to be here with you this morning.

And to those of us who are joining online, thank you for joining us.

So as you as you know, I've just returned from Damascus and what we've seen is that the impact of the conflict over the last 14 years is really evident everywhere.

I went as one of the first UN principals, head of an agency to go into the country.

I went into the country with the emergency relief coordinator, with Tom Fletcher and a delegation.

And we met with the caretaker government.

We met with civil society, we met with other humanitarian actors, UN partners, the diplomatic and the donor community.

And what I saw is basically that it's a country at a crossroads.

It's a country that has been deeply affected by the conflict over the last several years, but also it's a a country where there's a sense of hope and optimism, a sense of opportunity, a sense of excitement and energy about what's to come.

Now we know that the situation on the ground is one that is daunting to say the least.

There are 16 million people who we know have humanitarian needs.

Already more than 6,000,000 have left the country since the conflict began and 7.2 millionaire displaced across its borders.

What we expect is that the returns will happen on a much, much larger scale than than we've seen.

And our goal here is to make sure that when people return, they return to a place of stability.

They return to a place where they can find a home, where they can find a place to live and where they're not then forced to move repeatedly.

What we know is that across the country, infrastructure has been destroyed, Hospitals, schools, community centres, basic basic infrastructure that we would all rely on if we're expecting to go home.

We know Aleppo was all but destroyed during the conflict between 2012 to 2016, and 2 million people are leaving the city or have left that city.

We also are seeing, and I know we'll hear from some of our colleagues from the UN family later today, the humanitarian needs range from the most basic things like shelter, water, hygiene, sanitation, to a much more complex task of rebuilding the country.

I've also heard from many Syrians that I've spoken to and my colleagues have spoken to, there is a desire for people to go home.

There is interest in going back to where people have come from.

But what we see on the ground is that if there are overwhelming numbers of people who go home now into what is an incredibly fragile situation, it will overwhelm the country and it could risk greater, more destructive impact on a very fragile peace process.

Now, I travelled, as I said, as part of a delegation that was led by the emergency relief coordinator.

I personally met with a representative of the caretaker government who would be our counterpart within the the Syrian government, the minister who works on social affairs.

And he was quite clear in his conversation with me how anxious he is for the international community to return, to be part of the rebuilding of their country, to encourage people to come home.

It was a sense of openness.

Frankly, I've we have not, not seen as IOM in many, many years.

And the message was echoed throughout by all members of the caretaker government to all parties, whether they were other members of the diplomatic corps or other members of the UN family.

Now, IOM was pushed out of the country in 2018 by the Assad regime.

We continue to provide humanitarian assistance, but we did so through a cross-border entry point and have reached millions since 2014, mostly in northwest Syria, which is where our we had a supply chain hub and distribution of humanitarian items.

That hub is going to be critical, particularly given the escalation of conflict in Idlib, in northern Aleppo.

We also know that, and we heard this from everyone, there is a need to scale up resources as quickly as possible.

There is enormous, enormous gaps in terms of meeting the needs of people.

The caretaker government does not have the capacity to meet those needs.

They need the support of partners across the world.

Within IOM, we are playing a role in the health sector.

In partnership with our colleagues from The Who, who you'll hear from later today, we've facilitated the establishment of medical oxygen plants in several hospitals throughout the country.

But you know, this is just the beginning.

There's so much more that we need to do.

I'd like to also just make the point that it's critical that we encourage the caretaker government to create an inclusive government.

We want to make sure that women and girls have a place in the new society.

We want to make sure that political minorities and religious minorities have a place in the new society.

And it's critical that we across the board echo the call for an inclusive government so that we don't see further displacement.

So we see a a couple of key issues that really we need to prioritise #1 of course is humanitarian assistance.

More than 90% of the population live below the poverty line.

800,000 people have been newly displaced in recent weeks.

And frankly, across the board, we've had some pretty serious challenges meeting those humanitarian needs, largely because of the barriers that were put in place by the Assad regime, but also because of the ongoing conflict.

We also see that the situation is fragile.

The country remains under sanctions.

There's a huge shortage of normal goods.

Most of the economy is relying on cash.

So the need for support is across the board.

Just to give you one quick example, when I was in Damascus, I met with a young woman who's a resident doctor.

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dollars a month at a hospital, so she's had to take on other work just to make ends meet.

We also are going to need exemptions from sanctions for development and reconstruction efforts.

That is the only way that we can scale up to meet the emerging needs that we're seeing now.

Our second key priority is stabilisation and these things have to happen in tandem.

We can't just have a humanitarian response without otherwise stabilising the situation there.

There's going to be a transition.

Justice, reparation and inclusivity is an important piece of this.

Housing, land and property rights are key and at the heart of community stabilisation in the context of the returns that we anticipate.

Now we've done this all over the world, whether it's in the response to the situation in Iraq, for example, in other parts of the world.

But we see that it's critical that we protect and support these rights in a post conflict society.

We also are want to note that returns will happen, but in line with our our sister agency at the UNHCR for the time being, we are not promoting large scale returns.

The the communities, frankly, are just not ready to absorb the people who are displaced and would come back.

And we're hoping, we all hope that we can stabilise and respond to a situation that's very much in flux.

And we believe that millions of people returning would create conflict within already fragile society.

We know that the Syrians, when they go home, they want to make sure that they can stay home.

And right now the situation across the board is not conducive to doing that.

We also are speaking with Syrian communities around the world.

I had a chance to speak to some when I was in Lebanon.

They're very much in a wait and see posture.

They're assessing, in some cases sending a head of households over into Syria to have an assessment of what remains, whether their house is still there, for example, whether it's safe, whether there's an operating school.

And then they're passing that information back to their families wherever they might be in the world as they're taking decisions about whether it is time to go back.

We also heard from some of the Syrians who've either recently left or who are in country who are very concerned about the possibility of a lasting peace.

So in some cases, there are communities who have left because they're worried that they'll be the target of attack, not because they've necessarily received direct threats, but they're anticipating a situation where they could be at risk.

We also, we also heard from communities, for example, the Christian community who hasn't yet left but are very much worried about the next several months and want to make sure that they don't become the targets of attack.

I had the some conversations with members of border officials at the border between Lebanon and Syria.

That's the same phenomenon that they're observing.

1 is on the on going into Syria, the head of household going in to do an assessment, some number of returns but relatively small numbers and then a number of people who are going out because of a potential threats to their long term well-being.

So for US, number one, it starts with getting the data so we get a good picture on the ground.

Before the conflict, we were the agency responsible for assessing humanitarian needs.

That is work that we continue to do until 2022, but we need to scale that up very, very quickly now that the regime is gone and and we can do that work effectively.

So that's where we are starting.

That information then goes out to the interagency community and our UN partners around the world, around the country can help to fill those deeds.

Of course, we're going to work closely with UNHCR who will be coordinating the returns of people from all over the world.

This is really a scale up.

Everyone is being asked to scale up capacity as quickly as possible so that we will be scaling up.

While we have an initial presence that has gone into Syria, we'll be moving people out very quickly into the five hubs that are around the country and we intend to resume collaboration with other UN and local and international NGOs inside the country.

And thirdly, we are staying very, very much in close contact with the neighbouring countries who've hosted Syrian populations over the last several years.

They are very much concerned about the return of Syrians, as we've heard from Lebanon in recent days, Jordan, Turkia, they are anxious for Syrians to go home, but they also understand the political fragility at this moment in time.

And so we urge them and are working with them so that they can hold off on on pushing forward on large scale returns at this moment.

We have done this work in many places around the world.

I'm in some cases, it's unfortunate to say places like South Sudan, Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Liberia.

We know that when we're rebuilding after a crisis, the challenges are enormous.

The priorities are urgent.

So we're we are absolutely committed to being part of the rebuilding effort, the humanitarian response effort, the long term stability of this country.

We all know that the people of Syria have endured unimaginable hardships, yet they're continuing to show resilience.

They're continuing to show courage.

They're continuing to show a commitment to their country.

So our goal is to call to the international community to match that resilience and to not desert them at their moment of need, to really double down on our support to them to ensure that they can achieve A lasting peace in the country.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Mrs Popen.

I just would like to draw the attention of the journalist to the statement that the Secretary General has given yesterday on Syria, where he said exactly what you said, that the political transition must be inclusive, credible and peaceful, and the process must be guided by the underlining principle of the Security Council resolutions.

We have distributed to you the statements and questions from the press in New York.

So now as usual, I will open the floor to cash question first in the room.

And then today about 50 people we have online.

So I'll start with Enya Pedrero, AFP, the French news agency.

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Thank you for organising that, that briefing.

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1 You mentioned the sanctions, that there is the need for a sanctions for exemption, sorry, for sanctions for development and reconstruction efforts.

Could you let us know better what sanctions are you talking about, imposed by whom and to who exactly, given there are there are a variety of sanctions.

And then on the European countries, I was wondering if, if you have been in contact with the European countries, in particular on the question of the return of Syrian refugees and the freezing of their asylum rights.

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So thank you very much.

So in, in terms of the sanctions, we really are talking about all the sanctions, UN sanctions, U.S.

sanctions, other sanctions.

Right now, you can see very much the effect of the sanctions in the country.

People do not have access to cash.

I mean, they do not have access to credit.

They're very much reliant on cash.

There's very much an informal market where goods are being exchanged.

The the salaries that people are getting for work are extremely low and often insufficient to meet their most basic of needs.

And you can see that across the board the sanctions has had quite a significant effect, especially on vulnerable populations.

So to rebuild the situation, there will be a need to re evaluate those sanctions and and given that some of the actors within the caretaker government are also targets of the sanctions, ensuring that the international community is able to work with them effectively to deliver life saving support is going to be critical.

And with regard to speaking with European partners and others, the answer is yes.

For example, yesterday I was in Stockholm.

You'll know, for example, that in Sweden there is a significant population of Syrian refugees.

There are Syrians who continue to seek asylum across Europe and our message to them across across Europe as well as in the neighbouring countries, is that this is not the moment to talk about large scale returns.

Certainly we want to support those individuals on a case by case basis who want to go home or who know that their communities from which they came are safe, but at this moment in time, our efforts need to be focused on the humanitarian submit situation and the recovery and rebuilding.

Thank you very much, Mohammed Aslan Anaduluan.

See the Turkish News Agency.

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Thank you for the brief.

Your office announced that 100,000.

Syrian refugees returned to the country after the fall of Assad regime last week.

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Returns will happen on March, much larger scale later.

At least it is expected.

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How many people?

Do you expect to return in Syria?

In the medium.

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I mean, I think at this moment in time it's difficult to speculate.

Of course, we know that there are 1,000,000 have been who have been displaced all around the world.

And certainly we saw in response to the bombing of southern Lebanon that many, many Syrians, in fact, spontaneously decided to return when they were in search of safety.

So that suggests that there are individual Syrians who are taking a decision based on information they might have about a particular area that may be more safe than others.

So I expect that that will continue.

We saw 100,000 to have gone back in about 100,000 since, you know, over the last couple of weeks we've also seen another of 150,000 people who are internally displaced go and go back to their village or city of origin.

But I think very much that is a situation in flux.

In some cases people are going back, they're making an assessment and then they're leaving again.

It's not clear yet how many people will be able to stay on the longer term.

And at the same time, we saw for example, coming out of Lebanon, another approximately 85,000 who were leaving the country comes from Syria into Lebanon across that border.

So again, it's not clear how long the those folks will be leaving versus coming back as the situation stabilises over over the coming months.

But as we know, there are over 7 million people who have left Syria in the last 14 years.

So the numbers could be quite significant.

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Thank you very much for taking my question.

You mentioned the situation for women in Syria, So what are your impression after your visit?

Do you think that the there are some civil society, including women that would push to have more rights for them how their voice heard?

How do you do you experience it?

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Thanks very much.

That's a question that's very much on the minds of many, many women, of course, in the country, many of whom have been working, many of whom have been contributing to theirs, their their households.

And I think the answer is not clear yet.

There are certainly concerns that the extremist factions of the coalition that that ultimately was successful in toppling the Assad regime may influence the government in ways that make it difficult for women and girls.

And we are, we with our other UN partners, are strongly urging the caretaker government to continue to empower and enable women because they are going to be absolutely critical to the rebuilding of the country.

Ultimately, this is a situation where we need everyone to be working to create stability, everyone to be part of that solution.

And women are going to be a critical piece of that solution.

And so it's important that they be empowered to do so.

Thank you very much.

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The UN brief.

Yes, thank you very much for taking my question.

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It's been a little over a year that you are in your position.

What are you most satisfied that you have accomplished in this year in what you hope or what are you predicting for 2025?

And also in the light of the new admin, US administration, what you see will be the importance of finding adequate funds for doing your work.

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So it's hard to narrow it down to just one thing that I'm satisfied with.

One, I think the organisation has done incredible work on the ground as long as I've known of it, but it's not been as effective in talking about its work.

And so one of the things I'm very proud of is the fact that we're doing this briefing and we're investing in communications and talking about the good work that that we're doing because it's critical to changing the narrative about migration.

We've seen across the world how migration is a tool for development.

It leads to better economic outcomes for communities around the world.

And so we're really investing and enabling people to move safely, to move with legal status, to move in an orderly way at the same time that we're responding to humanitarian needs.

The other thing I'm very proud of is some of our partnerships to identify the impact of climate impact on on displacement and our work with, for example, COP 29 and our work with partners around the world to engage before people are displaced, to build out interventions before people are displaced, whether it's in the Middle East or the Horn of Africa or the South of Africa, around the world.

So those are some of the things.

And then in terms of the US, the US administration, nobody knows what that will look like.

We hope the US has been an important partner, a founder of our organisation since the very beginning.

And we hope that that will continue.

There's lots of good work and the United States is ultimately a country that's built on on migration.

So we hope that it will the work will continue in very positive ways.

Thank you very much.

I'll go to the platform.

Catherine Fianca Bokonga, France Vancat, French Channel.

Bonjour, Catherine.

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My question is related to the meeting.

That is going.

To take place in January, France did announce.

That it will host.

A meeting on lifting, sanctions and reconstruction.

So I'd like to know if you as IOM will.

Participate to that meeting and if you know if.

There will.

Be a participation of members of the HTS and also I'd like to to know if you had the chance or if you.

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Speak with European countries.

That are.

Trying to push Syrian refugees to go back to their country, Austria decided.

To give €1000.

To the Syrians that decide to go back to their countries.

So will you have?

Meetings with maybe the European Commission or certain countries.

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Thank you very much.

So with respect to the French meeting in particular, I don't have an answer for you in terms of participation and who will be there.

But I will say that IOM along with other partners within the UN family, we're all very, very committed to working with stakeholders, whoever they might be.

This needs to be a all hands on deck effort.

The challenges are immense across multi sectors and across the work of many different agencies and actors and certainly the needs for funding both financial resources, political resources are going to be enormous.

So we will be part of any effort to to help address the situation there.

And I expect likewise that will be true for for all stakeholders.

In terms of the European countries, I mean, we have, we do know that they're Syrians who continue to seek asylum.

This last year, Syrians were the second largest group crossing the central Mediterranean in terms of seeking asylum in Europe.

They they fell just after the nationals of Bangladesh.

And we do here at, for example, when I was in Lebanon, I spoke to a group of Syrians.

Every single one of them had family or friends who had tried to cross the Mediterranean at some point to seek refuge in Europe.

And as the situation evolves, until we know there's going to be a lasting peace and stability in the region, we expect that that there will be Syrians who continue to seek refuge, whether in neighbouring countries, in European countries or elsewhere in the world.

Our advice, and this is consistent with our partners at UNHCR, is that still every person has a right to a case by case assessment of their particular claims.

There may be individuals who are particularly at risk because of their family profile or their background.

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We'd certainly advise against any blanket determination based on someone's nationality that would prohibit them from seeking access to asylum.

And at the same time, as I've said, we're urging European Member States and I have had the chance to speak to several of them and we will continue speaking with them to to slow down on any plans to send people back.

Ideally, when people go home, it should be part of an integrated effort that's looking at the conditions on the ground and is and is coming, frankly, with an investment into those communities to ensure that people are not then pressed to leave a second time.

I mean, ultimately, people will make rational decisions.

They're humans first and foremost.

So if they go home, if there's instability, conflict, lack of opportunity, we should anticipate they would then move again.

And I don't think anybody wants to see that happen.

No, we are almost finishing the time.

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OK, so I'll give the floor to Antonio Barrotto, Spanish News Agency online.

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Thank you, Miss Pope, for this briefing.

You have repeatedly said that this is not a moment for for large returns, but I wonder if you recommend the government of those countries to set policies or measures for facilitating the return of those who have already decided by themselves to go back to Syria.

If you recommend this, what do you think these policies could include information channels to communicate with, with the authorities, with, with maybe job opportunities?

And also I would like to know if IOM is, is also doing or or is thinking of, of doing these policies.

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Thank you very much.

So we do know that there are Syrians who are going home now spontaneously.

We do encourage that they be given support when they go home.

We recognise when they go home they're reporting back to their communities about the conditions on the ground.

So the more stable, the more peaceful, the more likely it is that they'll encourage other members of their communities to come home.

There are a couple of needs that will need to be addressed based on the conversations we've been having with Syrian communities.

First and foremost is just a question of access to basic things like water and sanitation.

Or is their house still standing?

So helping individuals go back first to make the assessment and then second to address the individual community needs.

For example, is there a hospital in place?

Does a hospital need to be rebuilt?

Is there access to basic healthcare are key pieces.

Another part of the the solution will be access to land.

And that's a role where IOM is and will continue to play a role to make sure that that people who have had land and then abandoned it when they fled the country still can get access to records about their land and if necessary to rebuild their house.

So this is a question that is it really critical that we have all partners around the table working together, whether they be in the UN and civil society, local community actors.

And of course, we very, very much need the the UN member states to be part of that effort.

And we encourage them to work comprehensively on an approach so that we're not speaking about isolations in return.

We're we're not talking speaking about returns in isolation.

We're actually looking at what is the, the, what is the city, the village, the town where people will go back to, what's the situation on the ground?

And can we pair the early recovery and rebuilding support with the communities that people are going back to?

Very last question goes to Emma Farge, Reuters.

[Other language spoken]

Amy, I just wanted to ask you, you talked about the risk of returns may be overwhelming the country.

UNHCR has projected that about a million Syrians will return in the first six months of 2025.

Would that amount overwhelm the country?

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It's great to hear from you.

So I understand from UNHCR that the million is really a planning number.

It is not necessarily a projection of of number of people who will return.

And the answer to the question is really specific to the communities to which they are returning.

For example, the situation in Damascus is is far more stable than the situation for example in the north of the country.

And so this again is, is why we're encouraging states to look at the specific case of individuals to approach this in a comprehensive way to assess the safety, security, the infrastructure, the opportunities that exist in different parts of the country.

And to start with a needs assessment of the the Syrians who are now in their country to determine where it is they plan to go back.

What are their particular concerns they have, For example, if you are a parent and you have school age children, but there's no schooling available in the village from which you've come, your decision to go back is going to be much more difficult.

So again, we, we very much encourage states to take a comprehensive approach, work with all of the actors in the space, work with a caretaker government so that we can achieve lasting peace and stability, which is, which is of course good for the Syrians, but frankly is also good for the surrounding countries and the countries that now continue to host Syrians.

Digipop, thank you very much for this briefing.

I am having a question in the chat if it's possible to send out the remarks, the initial remarks I'm looking at Zoe that could help us with this or Kennedy or Mohammed.

So we'll stop for a few minutes.

We'll continue speaking about Syria with the invitee from WHONOHCHR here in the room.

Then we have, we are going to go to Gaza with UNICEF and invited from Amman and it's not on your programme, but it's just been added.

Louis Waterich will also from UNRWA will also speak from Gaza.

And then we will hear about very important crisis in Sudan with OHCHR and again UNHC&OHCHR again and UNHCR.

So thank you very much.

I wish you all the best for your very important work in CM.

Mrs Pop, let's stop for two minutes.

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Press Conference: IOM Director General Amy Pope on Syria - 20 December 2024