- More than 230,000 killed since 2011
- At least 12 million displaced
- One in four living in extreme poverty
BEIRUT (Thomson Reuters Foundation) — On March 15, 2011, a 40-strong crowd gathered in Old Damascus chanting political slogans. The brief protest in Syria’s capital marked the start of nearly 14 years of war and brutality that ended with the fall of President Bashar al-Assad.
On Dec. 8, 2024, Syrian rebels seized Damascus after a lightning advance that sent Assad fleeing to Russia, ending more than 50 years of Assad family rule.
As many Syrians celebrated and refugees began to pour back home from neighboring countries, the cost of the devastating civil war is being tallied.
Here is a breakdown of the key numbers illustrating the conflict’s impact on Syria and its people.
Death and torture
The final death toll is hard to tally.
The United Nations estimated last year that more than 300,000 civilians had been killed by the end of March 2021, an average of 84 civilians every day.
Researchers estimated in 2021 that a further 250,000 fighters had been killed during the first 10 years of the civil war.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) – an independent human rights group – puts the toll slightly lower, logging 231,495 civilian deaths between March 2011 and June 2024.
Government forces and allied Iranian militias were responsible for about 87% of these deaths, according to SNHR.
The victims included almost 30,000 children, almost 76% of whom were killed by government forces.
Assad’s government also institutionalized torture, according to human rights groups.
In the notorious Sednaya prison complex, dubbed the “Human Slaughterhouse”, jailers carried out mass hangings and executions, Amnesty International said in a 2017 report.
It said the killings, torture, enforced disappearance, mass hangings and extermination of detainees in Sednaya were “part of a widespread and systematic attack against civilians amounting to crimes against humanity”.
SNHR said that as of August this year, 15,102 people had been tortured to death by the warring parties, with more than 98% of them killed by government forces.
Displacement
The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR described the Syria crisis as the largest displacement crisis in the world, with more than 12 million people forced to move.
A huge earthquake in February last year exacerbated the situation, affecting some 8.8 million people, destroying homes and levelling vital infrastructure.
To date, almost 5 million people have fled to the neighbouring countries of Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan.
Turkey has the highest number of war-displaced, with about 3.8 million Syrians registered as refugees.
A further 1.9 million people are registered as refugees in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon and 41,000 in North Africa.
Syrians have also been forced to move around inside their country in what aid agencies have described as one of the world’s largest and longest internal displacement crises.
About 7.2 million people have fled their homes, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, which is part of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).
As the rebels advanced on major cities between Nov. 28 and Dec. 8, approximately 1 million people – mostly women and children – were forced out, from as far afield as Aleppo, Hama, and Homs governorates, according to the U.N.
It was at least the second forced move for more than one in five of them.
Economic Collapse
War destroyed economic networks, obliterated infrastructure and forced people to abandon their homes, schools and jobs.
Syria’s gross domestic product more than halved between 2010 and 2020, according to the World Bank.
From 2011 until 2020, the fallout spilled across borders.
The conflict cut average annual GDP growth rates in Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon by 1.2, 1.6, and 1.7 percentage points respectively, in real terms, according to the World Bank.
This amounts to a combined 11.3% loss of economic activity when measured against pre-war levels, the World Bank said.
Poverty
Extreme poverty was virtually non-existent in Syria pre-war, but now more than one in four live in extreme poverty, the World Bank said in a report.
More than half of them live in three governates: Aleppo in the north, west-central Hama and Deir-ez-Zor in the northeast.
In Deir ez-Zor, 72% of the population survives on less than $2.15 a day, the bank said.
Women-led households and displaced families were most at risk of poverty.
Education
The war destroyed more than 7,000 schools and ended formal education for some 2 million children, according to the U.N.
“Humanitarian conditions inside the country are dire, with millions of children and families facing extreme deprivation,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said last week.
Healthcare
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 65% of hospitals and 62% of primary healthcare centres are fully operational in Syria, leaving gaping health holes for millions.
More than a decade of conflict has also starved the industry of professionals after they were killed or fled, resulting in chronic staff shortages.
Almost 1,000 medical professionals were killed in Syria from 2011 until March 2024, said Physicians for Human Rights, a New York-based advocacy group that uses science and medicine to document and campaign against mass atrocities.
Humanitarian aid
Needs are at an all-time high in Syria, with 16.7 million requiring assistance, according to the European Commission.
Only 27.3% of the United Nations Humanitarian Response Plan for Syria this year was ever funded, said the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in November.
“Although 2 million people urgently need winter assistance, the Winterization Plan is just 10% funded,” the report said.
“Half of the health facilities are non-functional, affecting 1.5 million people, and over 1 million children face school dropouts amid ongoing closures.”
—Reporting by Nazih Osseiran; Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths
