UK lifts sanctions on dozen Syrian government bodies

The new HTS-led Syrian government is trying to persuade Western capitals that crippling international sanctions should be lifted.

Speaking at a televised event with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said at the beginning of this year: “We inherited a lot of problems from the Assad regime, … but removing economic sanctions is key for the stability of Syria.”Some countries, including the United States, have said they will wait to see how the new authorities exercise their power and ensure human rights before lifting sanctions, opting instead for targeted and temporary exemptions.

Last week, a visiting United Nations official called on Syria’s authorities to begin the process of economic recovery without waiting for Western sanctions to be lifted.

“Waiting for sanctions to be lifted leads nowhere,” Abdallah Al Dardari, the regional chief for Arab states at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), told the AFP news agency in an interview in Damascus.

Decades needed to recover
A February UNDP report estimated that at current growth rates, Syria would need more than 50 years to return to the economic level it had before the war, and it called for massive investment to accelerate the process.

The UN study said nine out of 10 Syrians now live in poverty, one-quarter are jobless and Syria’s GDP “has shrunk to less than half of its value” in 2011, the year the war began.

Syria’s Human Development Index score, which factors in life expectancy, education and standard of living, has fallen to its worst level since it was first included in the index in 1990, meaning the war erased decades of development.