Sectoral impact:
Syria ranks 6th globally in the November 2024–May 2025 Hunger Hotspot Outlook. Around 14.56 million people are food insecure, of whom 9.1 million are classified as acutely food insecure (including 1.4 million severely food insecure), and 5.4 million are at risk of food insecurity according to the results of 2024 Food Security Assessment. Furthermore, the food security situation in Syria has significantly deteriorated since September 2024 impacted by the hostilities in Lebanon and the political transition in December 2024.
Large scale population movements, including returnees to areas of origin and newly displaced persons resulting from volatile security incidents, have occurred across the country. The hostilities in Coastal regions in March 2025 have resulted in thousands of deaths, injuries, displacement and damage to civilian infrastructure and hindered people’s access to food. In southern areas, Israeli airstrikes and incursions have resulted in deaths, and injuries posing threats to both civilian lives and restricting access to agricultural lands.
Prolonged conflict across the country has destroyed infrastructure, and widespread displacement has left millions without access to food. Across the country, vulnerable communities are struggling with financial hardships due to asset loss and severe affordability gap. Despite the improvement in the Syrian currency following the change in government control, and slight reduction in food prices, economic challenges continue to hamper accessibility and affordability to food and essential inputs. Amid worsening food insecurity conditions-affecting over 9 million people, and significant shortfalls in national wheat production due to deficit in rainfall levels, access to affordable bread, a staple food for Syrians, has become increasingly challenging. Recent subsidy reductions have driven bread prices up more than tenfold, exacerbating hardship among the most vulnerable populations. The minimum wage can only cover 13 percent of the MEB according to WFP April 2025 Market Price Bulletin, severe cash liquidity constraints persist, with banks and automatic machines (ATMs) enforcing strict withdrawal limits, affecting both individuals and businesses alike.
The reduction in humanitarian funding, particularly during the January-April 2025 period, has significantly affected the response and the ability of actors to reach people in need. The above factors combined with limited income generating opportunities are driving households into adopting negative coping strategies, such as relying on debt, selling assets, or resorting to child labour to meet basic needs. Additionally, there is an alarming decline in food consumption and dietary diversity, as households reduce their food intake and access to nutritious diets.
At the same time, the 2024-2025 season has ushered in an unprecedented drought in Syria, posing grave threats to food security and significantly hindering the recovery and progress of the agricultural sector. With a deviation of cumulative rainfall from 37 per cent to a high 69 per cent , resulting in an average seasonal rainfall deficit of 54 per cent compared to long-term averages, the current conditions have led to extreme drought, affecting over 75 per cent of cultivated crops and livestock grazing areas. This is considered the worst extreme weather Syria has experienced in 60 years according to the FAO Drought alert released in June 2025. Key Syrian agricultural regions, including Al-Hasakeh, Aleppo, Idleb, Hama, Dar’a, and Homs, have experienced catastrophic losses in cultivation of wheat and barley exceeding 95 per cent in rainfed areas. The projected wheat deficit of 2.7 million tons could jeopardize the food security of 16.2 million people for an entire year. The implications are severe, with the collapse in crop yields, and animal feed prices soaring by 100-300 per cent, resulting in a 40 per cent decrease in livestock numbers and increased mortality rates among vulnerable animals. This represents a drastic and escalating crisis.
Syria’s bread and bakery sector is facing urgent and mounting challenges. It is burdened by damaged infrastructure, low worker wages, outdated equipment, persistent fuel shortages, limited access to electricity supply, and is in an urgent need for comprehensive investment to maintain and scale-up bread production that meets the populations’ needs.
The irrigation systems are not faring any better. Although there has been a lot of investment in rehabilitation of irrigation systems, interventions to rehabilitate and invest in the construction and support of irrigation systems across Syria are still required.
The food security situation in Syria continues to deteriorate as the political instability, ongoing security, environmental degradation, and a protracted economic crisis erode resilience at both the household and community levels. These interlinked drivers have made it increasingly difficult for populations to recover from or adapt to mounting food insecurity. The strain is further compounded by the return of Syrian refugees, who are placing additional pressure on an already fragile infrastructure and limited funding.
With rising needs and the uncertain funding outlook for 2025 which is already impacting both regular food assistance and agriculture-livelihood programmes across Syria, the outlook for the most vulnerable households is expected to worsen significantly, deepening food insecurity across the country.
Immediate needs:
- Syria faces a growing and complex set of food security challenges requiring immediate and sustained support. Emergency food assistance is urgently needed for displaced households, populations affected by conflict, and those in hosting centres/areas, as coping mechanisms are nearly exhausted.
- Continued assistance is critical for severely food insecure households, alongside scale-up support for those at risk of falling into severe food insecurity.
- The bread and bakery sector in Syria is under severe strain due to rising input costs, exchange rate volatility, removal of subsidies, poor quality control in bakeries, all exacerbated by a significant funding gap. The return of refugees has further increased demand for bread in certain areas, worsening access and affordability of bread, underscoring the need for targeted bakery support through the provision of raw materials to ensure a stable affordable bread supply nationwide. The partial removal of the bread subsidy programme has further undermined people’s affordability and accessibility to bread, making support to the national bread value chain increasingly critical.
- Critical and time-sensitive emergency agriculture-livelihood support is essential for farmers and livestock keepers struggling under the compounded impact of drought and economic hardship. Many have depleted their savings and are resorting to extreme coping mechanisms. These includes:
- Timely delivery of seeds and inputs to wheat producers to safeguard the upcoming season and prevent a third year-in-a-row failure in domestic food production.
- Lifesaving animal feed, livestock health services, and disease control are also urgently required to prevent widespread animal losses.
- Rehabilitation of critical water resources in grazing areas is needed to restore water availability for herders
- Conflict-sensitive rehabilitation of damaged infrastructure, including but not limited to irrigation infrastructure, and bread value chain infrastructure (bakeries, mills, silos,), is essential to enhance agricultural production and strengthen the food systems, especially during the summer season, offering an opportunity for recovery following a severely disrupted winter season and contributing to broader social cohesion.
Priority activities:
- Provide emergency food assistance and bread support through appropriate modalities to the displaced populations and refugee returnees in need of food assistance up to 6 months.
- Provide lifesaving, targeted food assistance to 2.9 million severely food insecure and at risk of food insecurity households across Syria, prioritizing vulnerable populations, particularly women and children.
- Concurrently, invest in emergency agricultural inputs for these vulnerable populations in areas facing drought, such as seeds, fertilizers, fuel, harvesting equipment, and animal feed, vaccines and treatment against parasites to support agriculture-based livelihoods and mitigate the impact of recent disruptions on farm-based economic activity in both the winter and summer seasons.
- Rehabilitate damaged infrastructure, including irrigation systems, bread value chain and other facilities critical for wheat. Support bakeries with raw materials to protect and increase their capacity to produce affordable bread.
- Immediately invest in the timely generation of quality evidence-based data and analysis to guide and inform emergency and recovery programming. This will focus on conducting in-depth analysis to bridge critical evidence gaps, inform policy and emergency programming, and modernize agricultural strategies. It includes updating agroecological zoning data in view of targeting support to returning population.
- Promote a humanitarian-development-peace (HDP) and localisation approach as a cornerstone for investment in food production, climate-resilient agricultural practices, and improve access to farming tools and irrigation systems to restore agricultural productivity. This includes income-generating opportunities to enhance and improve production/productivity: short-cycle vegetable and distribution of kits to help families restart production (poultry, beekeeping, mushroom, and pond aquaculture).
Response strategy:
The Food Security Sector (FSS) sector aims to address the immediate food needs of vulnerable populations, enhance their self-reliance, and contribute to restoring community resilience in Syria. This includes both short-term emergency assistance and long-term strategies to improve food security. The prerequisite to support the above action is facilitating a systematic process to generate timely and evidence–based data and analysis, to inform the targeted agriculture sector response
In the short term, FSS advocates for emergency aid to displaced households, returnees, and those affected by recent political changes, targeting severely food-insecure populations. Cash and Voucher Assistance is prioritized in areas with functional markets. Additionally, the sector supports the provision of critical and time-sensitive emergency agricultural inputs that would support the entire agriculture value chain from production to marketing, such as seeds, animal feed, veterinary drugs and vaccines, emergency water for production to farming communities, and land rehabilitation for returnee communities. The 2024 Food Security Assessment identified those most at risk of severe food insecurity, guiding the prioritization of current food assistance.
FSS aims to continue supporting bread and bakeries by providing raw materials and improving infrastructure, continue rehabilitating irrigation systems, rebuilding agriculture-based livelihoods in conflict-sensitive ways, promoting income generation, enhancing local food production, supporting livestock production and fisheries, and offering to support revival of agricultural extension services.
The FSS sector emphasizes coordination at all levels to avoid overlap, improve complementarity, and fill assistance gaps. Standardized Monitoring and Assessment of Relief and Transitions (SMART) tools will be used to track assistance and prevent duplication at the geographical and household level through dedicated deduplication platforms. FSS will collaborate with other sectors such as early recovery, WASH, nutrition, and health to address interconnected needs, and coordinate with CWGs. Partnering with the GBV AoR will strengthen responses to reduce GBV risks, focusing on women and girls.
The sector prioritizes AAP, protection, gender, and inclusion, focusing on women, children, persons with disabilities (PWDs) and other vulnerable groups. The sector will deploy the Humanitarian, Development, and Peace (HDP) approach and localisation strategy to ensure the sustainability of actions towards building the resilience of Syrian communities. The proposed FSS interventions will address the specific needs of women, men, boys, and girls, recognizing the specific challenges they face. The sector efforts secure women’s enhanced participation in food security programming while ensuring that female-headed households and other at-risk groups receive targeted assistance that fosters long-term recovery and food self-sufficiency. A community feedback mechanism will ensure community engagement, transparency, identification of protection risks such as exclusion, misconduct, fraud, corruption, local tension and sexual exploitation and abuse, facilitating timely response, while monitoring and evaluating programmes and adapting them evolving needs. FSS is committed to PSEA, with clear reporting mechanisms, safe referrals, and capacity building. Do no harm principles will be integrated into food security interventions to ensure safe, dignified assistance and to address risks related to child protection and GBV.