An Open Letter to the incoming UN HCRC for Syria
Dear Ms. Nathalie Fustier,
Please accept our congratulations on your appointment as ad interim United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator and Resident Coordinator for Syria.
You assume this responsibility at a moment of profound political, institutional and humanitarian transition. Few contexts carry such a long memory, deep fatigue, and urgency. The decisions you take in the coming months will shape not only access and coordination structures, but also trust, the element the UN system has found most difficult to sustain in Syria.
We write not as current actors in the response, nor on behalf of the more than 160 NGOs we supported during the post-December transition, but as former interlocutors who witnessed the system’s fracture and sought, from our position, to help hold it together. We offer these reflections in recognition of your mandate, and in the hope that the missteps that defined Syria’s past response will not be quietly reproduced in its future.
1. The deficit you inherit is not just financial. It is relational.
In Syria, the UN response has been judged not just by what it delivered, but by how, and in whose shadow, it did so. Between 2013 and 2024, the actions (or lack thereof) of the UN often contributed to state consent hardening into gatekeeping; neutrality becoming indistinguishable from silence; and coordination drifting dangerously close to containment.
These institutional habits meant the humanitarian response internalised and, in many cases amplified, the architecture of a brutal regime. That legacy still shapes how Syrians read UN intent today. You do not carry responsibility for that past, but you inherit its ongoing consequences.
For a decade, humanitarian presence in Syria was mediated through comparative access: who could enter which territory, who could speak, who could not, and who could speak only through intermediaries. Authorities, civil society networks, and municipal responders today do not define legitimacy solely by UN mandate. Legitimacy in Syria, as elsewhere, is tied inextricably to proximity, reciprocity, and clarity of intention.
In your role, neutrality will require not just standing apart from power, but being seen as accessible to all actors, and aligned with none.
2. NGOs are equal partners in the response
The end of the regime and the dissolution of the pre-existing WoS pathways were not solely political events; they exposed the structural fragility beneath a decade of humanitarian choreography.
On December 9th, NGOs did not ask whether leadership should be rebuilt, they simply began rebuilding it. As UN mechanisms lost relevance overnight, NGOs quietly tested forms of representation that navigated a fluid political landscape. The unity of NGOs in Syria was, is, procedural, negotiated, often exhausted, but it has found success in making humanitarian aid more principled and more accountable to Syrians.
You, and the response you lead, have a responsibility to reinforce these dynamics. The UN, afterall, does not have a monopoly on coherence, and has opportunities to learn from NGOs on how to be more agile, effective, and courageous.
3. Split authorities within the UN system continues to weaken the response
One of the least discussed challenges in Syria is an increasingly caustic internal UN geometry. Agency leads still approach coordination with individual interests and opportunity cost calculations.
One of the most consistent features of the UNCT in Syria has been agency heads protecting their own mandates and funding, often at the expense of response wide coherence. This continues to lead, predictably, to siloed negotiations for access and political signalling that undercuts joint positions.
This is not unique to Syria, but in Syria the stakes are higher because fragmentation has memory. When the UN speaks with multiple tones, Syrians hear the echoes of an era in which humanitarian actors appeared aligned with power rather than with people.
You will need authority not only downward, with clusters and partners, but sideways, across agency heads who, by habit or design, may feel more accountable to New York or Geneva than to a cohesive response in Damascus, Raqqa, Aleppo, Sweida, or Hassake. Your role carries the power to shape the culture of accountability, and with that comes a responsibility to transform fragmented reporting lines into a unified, principled, and responsive effort.
4. What the UN Chooses to Defend
The UN’s comparative advantage in Syria was never only logistics or access. It was the promise of principled distance. That promise blurred under the regime. You now have an opportunity to restore it. What the UN chooses to defend will matter as much as what it chooses to coordinate.
Coordination should not simply default to absorption or bureaucratic consolidation. While a degree of centralization can support coherence and efficiency, it must be carefully grounded in actual needs and accompanied by robust accountability mechanisms. Decisions should be transparent, consultative, and responsive to the realities on the ground, rather than imposed from above. Any move toward centralization risks being perceived not as a step toward stability, but as a regression, unless it is clearly linked to meaningful oversight, inclusivity, and practical support for local actors.
A meaningful engagement with Syrian authorities requires clarity and respect, not performative deference. Authorities are experienced interlocutors; approaches perceived as overly deferential, or as a substitute for principled dialogue, risk undermining the credibility of the UN system rather than strengthening access or cooperation.
Dialogue with authorities is indispensable. Deference is not. In our experience with government interlocutors, many of whom come with first-hand experience of the aid sector, engagement that is direct, consistent, and anchored in mandate and international law is more likely to preserve both operational space and institutional credibility.
Syria has seen what happens when humanitarian urgency justifies structural amnesia. The speed of reform must not outpace the integrity of reform.
5. No one expects perfection. But Syrians increasingly expect honesty
The hardest work ahead is not only operational; it is narrative. It is the work of truth-telling, of clarity, of reweaving trust where it has frayed.
To rebuild that trust, the UN must do more than plan or coordinate. It must confront the difficult truths of the past. It must acknowledge where humanitarian independence was compromised. It must demonstrate, in both word and action, how it will deliver assistance while upholding principled independence. It must invite scrutiny from Syrian NGOs and civic networks, not to manage it, but to engage with it honestly. And it must accept that coordination is no longer singular; it is collective, evolving, and grounded in the realities on the ground.
The NGO landscape you inherit is not a temporary scaffolding. It is an alternative memory of humanitarian practice, forged in necessity, recognized as legitimate, yet diverse in vision and approach. To engage it thoughtfully is to recognize that the UN’s place in Syria is not to recount the past, but to participate fully in the present: principled, accountable, and worthy of the trust it seeks to regain.
In closing,
Your tenure will not be measured by political settlements, nor by the pages of plans and strategies. It will be measured by whether humanitarian actors (Syrian and international alike) feel that the UN has returned not as a historian of the past, but as a principled partner in the present.
You did not write the legacy the system now wrestles with. Yet you stand at a rare and profound crossroads: the chance to break with mere continuation, to craft something different, something that matters.
With full respect for the enormity of the mandate, and in recognition of those who, day by day, hold the response together, it is clear that choices, courage, and clarity have the power to redefine the conversation. This is a moment to leave a mark as a force for principled, lasting engagement.
Giovanni Sciolto and Imrul Islam
Former Secretariat, Syria NGO Forum
