For over seven years, Syrian civilians have been suffering from killing, death, displacement, siege, poverty and the lack of basic services, for which the Syrian regime and its allies are largely responsible through their continued indiscriminate bombardment of opposition-held areas, hitting civilians including men, women and children. The regime is also imposing sieges on opposition-held areas, denying them basic services and preventing aid delivery thereto. In addition to that, forced displacement led to the displacement of about seven million Syrians inside Syria and another five millions to neighboring and distant countries.

Day after day life is getting harder for Syrians and the regime is committing more crimes. Since the last round of negotiations in Geneva, the regime has relentlessly bombarded eastern Ghouta with all kinds of weapons. This area has been under siege for years and denied all kinds of aid. Until today, the regime refuses evacuating a large part of the sick people there who are dying as a result of the lack of food and medicine.

The regime and its allies have intensified their bombardment on several areas in Idlib, leading to the displacement of about 200 thousand people, living today in the open without any basic needs available, including water, food, medicine, heating or even tents to resort to in this bitter cold.

In solidarity with our people, SWPM, in cooperation with the media office of Revolution Forces launched a campaign called: #StandWithCivilians in order to shed light on the suffering of civilians in Idlib, Ghouta, Rastan and all over Syria.

The objective of the campaign was to convey the voice of our people in these areas to international forums, with the hope that these cries will shock the conscience of the world to learn about the Syrian tragedy and undertake its humanitarian, moral and legal responsibility by helping the Syrian people and putting pressure on the Syrian regime and its allies to end the crimes they are perpetrating against the Syrian people. Our campaign was launched on social media as well as traditional media. Members of SWPM have also contributed to conveying our demands to the United Nations and its organizations as well as all international humanitarian organizations.

Despite our feeling of helplessness and frustration before the gravity of the tragedy our people are experiencing, we, in SWPM, promise our people to do our best to stand by their side and help them. We promise to continue the struggle against the tyrannical regime until the demands people revolted to realize are met, including freedom, dignity and justice. We promise to continue the struggle until a democratic modern state is established on the basis of equal citizenship and until all those who perpetrated crimes against our people are held accountable and prosecuted.

May our great Syrian people emerge victorious

General Secretariat of the Syrian Women’s Political Movement

January 11, 2018