Siege Watch

This report is the first in a series of quarterly reports by Siege Watch – a joint initiative of PAX and The Syria Institute. The Siege Watch project aims to provide the international community with timely and accurate information on conditions in Syria’s besieged communities. New data gathered by Siege Watch shows that there are well over 1,000,000 Syrians under siege in locations in Damascus, Rural Damascus, Homs, Deir Ezzor, and Idlib governorates. The scope and severity of sieges across Syria continues to grow despite United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolutions 2139 (2014), 2165 (2014), 2191 (2014), 2254 (2015), and 2258 (2015), all of which call for unobstructed humanitarian access. The deliberate starvation of civilians is also a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention and therefore a war crime.