David Miliband calls for international aid overhaul after Syria lessons learnt

IRC chief highlights Assad rule as example of how foreign aid can fail to reach those most in need

David Miliband says the lessons of Syria's civil war must lead to aid being directed away from government control. Matt Kynaston / The National

International aid must be reorganised and kept away from potentially corrupt governments so it can reach those most in need, the leader of the International Rescue Committee has said.

Chief executive David Miliband cited the example of sending aid to Syria during the rule of Bashar Al Assad as proof the system must change.

“The Syrian example has taught me a huge amount,” he said at a Chatham House event in London, pointing out that the healthcare system in the formerly rebel-held north-west of Syria was better than its counterpart in Damascus.

The UN was criticised throughout the civil war for working directly with Damascus to deliver aid, which favoured NGOs with close ties to the Assad regime and left much of the Syrian population with nothing. At UN Security Council meetings, Russian and Chinese vetoes repeatedly blocked aid from entering north-western Syria.

Mr Miliband said Syria could provide examples of how international aid can be delivered directly to civil society and non-state groups, as opposed to the accepted model of dealing directly with governments.

“We’ve got to normalise the idea of dealing with non-state and civil society actors,” he said.

The global rise in de facto authorities was significant, growing from 10 to 42 in about a decade and becoming a “big part of geopolitics” which governments and foreign aid donors would have to contend with, Mr Miliband said.

“All of our experience is that if you channel through civil society, you have less corruption, more legitimacy and acceptance, and you can get to people.”

His US-based aid organisation operated in opposition-held north-west Syria for more than 10 years during the civil war and has now expanded its activities across the country since the toppling of Mr Al Assad in December.

It has found that hospitals previously under Assad regime control to be “much worse” than those of north-west Syria, despite the majority of UN aid to the country being channelled to Damascus throughout the war.

“We were able to operate in a principled and humanitarian way in north-west Syria since 2013,” he said.

The IRC also worked in the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, which is still controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a majority-Kurdish armed group.

“We’ve now moved to a whole-of-Syria approach. What did we find? The health and hospital system is much worse in the government-held areas than in the rebel-held,” Mr Miliband said.

“Despite the fact that the whole UN system was focused in Damascus on the Assad regime with its Iranian and Russian support, it wasn’t delivering to its citizens."

Security forces and doctors outside Damascus Hospital. DPA

Aid obstacles

Access to conflict zones was the “biggest obstacle” to aid delivery now, he said. In Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan, the IRC was negotiating with rebel groups and other armed forces to arrange access to vaccines.

Aid agencies across the world are considering their options after the US announced it would slash its foreign aid budget in February. Among the IRC programmes to have been cut was an education project in Afghanistan, which catered to 580,000 children.

The UK followed suit shortly afterwards with Prime Minister Keir Starmer announcing the foreign aid budget would be reduced to 0.3 per cent of GDP to pay for an increase in national defence spending.

Mr Miliband, who served as foreign minister in Gordon Brown’s Labour government, fears the US cuts will lead to further “salami slicing” of aid from other donor countries.

Though he was disappointed with the Labour government’s decision to cut aid, he said efforts were now needed to ensure the 0.3 per cent “really does what it says on the tin”.

A poll in February by More In Common found that the UK public is more than twice as likely to say international aid has a “positive impact” rather than negative, and that all parties would want the aid to focus on urgent humanitarian issues rather than long-term systemic problems.

“I don’t want to deny all the struggles and the stress on the finances of families across the UK, but I still believe that, in the heart of Britain, there’s a view that while charity begins at home, it doesn’t need to end at home,” he said.

He urged the UK to invest in "proven programmes that could build public support".