Siege Watch

The Siege Watch project aims to provide the international community with up-to-date information on Syria’s besieged communities, where trapped civilians suffer in inhumane circumstances with little help from the outside world. Siege Watch is an initiative of peace organisation PAX. Active monitoring for the project began in late 2015 in partnership with The Syria Institute.

Siege Watch was an initiative of peace organisation PAX. Active monitoring for the project began in late 2015 in partnership with The Syria Institute and ended in 2018.

The Siege Watch project aimed to provide the international community with up-to-date information on Syria’s besieged communities, where trapped civilians suffered in inhumane circumstances with little help from the outside world.

The Siege Watch projected monitors and reported on Syria’s besieged areas using data collected from an extensive network of reporting contacts on the ground. Background information and updates on each besieged community were shared in the Siege Watch interactive map, and through in-depth quarterly reports, thus ensuring that the international community has access to timely, accurate information on the sieges. The deliberate starvation of civilians and other aspects of the sieges are war crimes under international law and violate UN Security Council Resolutions 2139 (2014), 2165 (2014), 2191 (2014), 2254 (2015), 2258 (2015), 2268 (2016), and 2401 (2018).

Spotlight on Syria’s besieged lives

The problem

Despite several UN Security Council resolutions calling for unobstructed humanitarian access, the Syrian regime – and in some cases ISIS and armed opposition groups – continue to besiege neighbourhoods and towns across the country. A siege occurs when armed forces cut off access to a populated area, blocking the entry of food and medicine and preventing the free movement of civilians into or out of the area, including the evacuation of people in need of urgent medical care. Electricity and water supplies to the besieged areas are often cut off, and they are further subjected to violent attacks including airstrikes, barrel bombs, chemical attacks, ballistic missiles, mortar and rocket fire, sniping, and ground force offensives. In Syria, this military tactic has been applied systematically against civilian populations by the Syrian government as a form of collective punishment against areas it does not control. The result is a man-made humanitarian disaster with hundreds of thousands of victims, some who have been trapped for three years. Because this crisis is physically contained, many people in the outside world are not even aware that these sieges are being conducted.

Our stance

The deliberate starvation of civilians and other aspects of the sieges are war crimes under international law and violate UN Security Council Resolutions. Civilians under siege need to be protected.

What we did

Siege Watch monitors Syria’s besieged areas using data collected on an ongoing basis from an extensive network of reporting contacts in besieged communities. Information on besieged communities is published in the interactive map on the Siege Watch website. Thus we provide reliable and factual data so that the international community can take informed action to protect Syrian civilians in the besieged area’s.