Four key lessons as we enter the tenth year of the Syrian war

The assault on Idlib is intended by the Syrian government to represent the grim climax of the nine-year-long war in Syria. 948,000 civilians have fled since December, with another 400,000 who still risk joining them – the largest civilian displacement since the war started nine long years ago. Every single day another 11,000 civilians join the hundreds of thousands on the run.

The immediate need in Syria is a ceasefire and increased, unimpeded humanitarian access to civilians in need. There is no chance of this happening without a strategic decision in Washington and European capitals that Syria matters enough to require all the costs that come with engagement.

But the catastrophe in Idlib and the war in Syria are part of a wider story. Idlib foreshadows an even darker trend towards an Age of Impunity – an era characterized by disregard for the rule of law and an equally grave deficit of international diplomacy, which allows the suffering of civilians to continue unabated. The danger is that Syria risks becoming the new blueprint for conflict around the world, setting off a race to the bottom for the rules of the international system unless we take the task of reflection seriously.

Four key lessons stand out as we enter the tenth year of the Syrian war:

1. International humanitarian law will become optional unless it receives a surge of support. We should strengthen the ability of people on the ground to safely record and document abuses, and countries who support IHL should use the economic tools at their disposal like the Magnitsky Act to bring accountability to those responsible for such crimes.
2. We need the independent, principled, and loud voice of the UN now more than ever. In matters of peace and security we cannot afford the power of the UN to bear witness to what is happening on the ground to be compromised.
3. Hard power still matters and the danger is that military force can render diplomacy irrelevant. While the presence of troops is insufficient on its own to resolve the underlying challenges of power-sharing and governance, their absence can make political reconciliation impossible.
4. The regime of refugee support has never been more needed but has never been more inadequate. The loss of the West as champions of refugee rights is echoing loudly throughout the world and leads to the situation we see today: Turkey using refugees for leverage against Europe, and Europe not really knowing how to react.

There is no doubt the scale of the Syria fatigue that is felt outside the country. But what right do we have to be fatigued compared to the people of Syria? Syria’s trauma represents many sins of commission, but also sins of omission. That is what we must seek to put right lest this new decade becomes one of impunity.

Last year, the International Rescue Committee provided lifesaving support across Syria to over 1.1 million people—almost half of them children—who are struggling to survive a brutal war now in its eighth year. The IRC is a member of the Global Emergency Response Coalition, who has launched an appeal to raise funds for the Syria crisis. The Global Emergency Response Coalition is a lifesaving humanitarian alliance made up of leading U.S.-based international aid organizations.