DUE DILIGENCE & SAFEGUARDING

Syria is undoubtedly one of the most complex war zones in the world.  Providing medical and humanitarian aid in such a challenging environment comes with great responsibilities, and our focus is on reaching the most vulnerable whilst ensuring that we do not compromise on following all the necessary processes that should be used to ensure that our work in Syria is properly planned, supervised, documented and regulated, and there are no avoidable opportunities for our aid to be lost or abused in any way.

Samara Levy regularly visits our projects in Syria and is in daily contact with our teams on the ground.  We work within the established legal infrastructure of each of the countries we are working in, which is essential in ensuring that we are not left vulnerable to the multitude of armed groups that are operating in Syria in the current conflict.  Our teams on the ground all have the correct registrations and authorisations needed to carry out this work and provide an accountable, credible service on the ground.

We have a safeguarding policy in place for our teams working with beneficiaries and distributing aid, and have been working to high standards in relation to distributing aid since we established these teams on the ground in Syria.  The distributions that our teams carry out are done by at least 50% female teams meaning that there will always be at least one woman working with every man in our aid distributions. Usually our teams who directly distribute aid are all female.  We have a number of other processes in place relating to handling aid, managing access to the warehouses in Syria as well as the way our distributions are planned and structured.  This ensures that there are no opportunities for our aid to be abused.