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Since the catastrophic earthquakes devastated parts of northern Syria one week ago, killing 5,800 people, injuring thousands, leaving 5.30 million homeless, and destroying infrastructure and residential buildings, the regime, opposition authorities, and local organisations began carrying out disaster relief efforts in affected areas. 

The Syrian government has seized the February 06 earthquake as an opportunity to call on Western governments to lift sanctions on Syria, claiming that they have severely impeded emergency response and humanitarian relief efforts to assist affected communities.

Despite the need for an emergency response after the earthquake, aid to opposition-held areas in Northwest Syria has been minimal and highly politicised, causing outrage. 

Almost ten days after the earthquake, little information or data is available about the economic impact of this event.

The Central Bank of Syria recently devalued the exchange rate for incoming remittances, bringing it closer to the black market rate. After the earthquake, it also enabled UN agencies and humanitarian organisations to use the new rate for earthquake-related donations and funds. 

This chart provides an overview of the number of planes and truck convoys carrying humanitarian aid that reached Syria between February 06 and 14.

Over 6,000 people have been killed and more than 26,000 injured after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake and aftershocks, the largest of which was 7.6 in magnitude, struck southern Turkey and northern Syria within a space of 12 hours in the early morning of February 06. 

The earthquake that struck Syria on February 06 will significantly impact the country’s economic activity, which is already suffering from a series of serious challenges.

The 7.8-magnitude earthquake at the Syria-Turkey border on February 06 is the strongest to have struck Syria for more than eight hundred years.

Governments and international organisations worldwide have offered aid and assistance to Syria after the recent earthquake. However, aid response and coordination efforts have been hampered by the destruction of roads and highways, weather conditions, fuel shortages, and territorial fragmentation across regime-opposition political lines, among other things.

This chart provides an overview of the number of seismic events recorded in Syria between 1995 and 2021.

A selection of reports, papers, and articles on Syria.

Recent months have confirmed the increased influence of Bashar Al-Assad and Asma Al-Assad over the country’s economy. Almost every other week, new information emerges indicating that businesspeople known for acting as fronts for the Syrian president and his wife have acquired stakes in a company or business project. With unrivalled economic power in their hands, this represents a major turn in how wealth is shared and distributed among Syria’s rulers.