Given the humanitarian crisis faced by the Syrian people, President Macron decided in April 2018 to extend the French support in Syria with an additional contribution of €50m ($58m).
A significant part of this new funding targets North Eastern Syrian and adds to the contribution of €10m ($12m) allocated by the French government in the context of the liberation of Raqqa city in October 2017. As of July 2018, French support in North Eastern Syria has therefore reached €23.3m ($27.1m). Additional actions in the region will be funded in 2018.
The aim of these contributions is to provide assistance to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), to facilitate return of the population and to contribute to stabilise the region in order to enable a sustainable victory over terrorism. This is why the assistance will focus on demining, rehabilitation of health services and of water provision, and support to agriculture and to economic activities in general. French humanitarian and stabilisation support in North-East Syria is coordinated with the Global Coalition against Daesh and includes:
1. Demining – €5.1m ($6m)
– French funding contributed to demining 18 villages and clearing more than six million square metres of land. Around 5,000 land mines and 35,000 other explosive items in Hassakeh, Raqqa countryside and Deir ez-Zor were cleared.
– France has also helped train independent local experts in the field of demining and organising mine education activities to raise awareness about the dangerous devices they could find in areas liberated from Daesh, reaching over 4000 people.
2. Food & agriculture – €9m ($10.4m)
– France supported the purchase of food stocks distributed in a large number of places, in particular to IDPs, for instance in Areesha camp. Food aid funded by France already reached more than 500,000 vulnerable people in the last few months.
– France is also supporting the local economy and in particular the agricultural sector, providing grants to farmers and helping refurbish bakeries.
3. Water provision – €4.4m ($5.1m)
– France supports the provision of clean water to the people of Raqqa and its province, through the installation of tanks and bladders and through the rehabilitation of water pumping stations.
– France has also supported NGO efforts to provide water and non-food items to displaced populations in the Deir ez-Zor Governorate.