Syria: Facilitating Urban Recovery and Transition

Since 2018, the Facilitating Urban Recovery and Transition (FURAT) programs have been a leader in restoring essential services in Northeast Syria following years of war and the defeat of ISIS. Essential services like water, sanitation, emergency response, and rubble removal are critical to returning stability to Northeast Syria and building confidence in local councils, limiting the space for an ISIS resurgence.

FURAT implements these essential services through local councils as part of its sustainable approach to restoring services. FURAT embeds technical experts in the councils to build their service provision capacity, which has resulted in more than 2,000 mentoring sessions reaching hundreds of council employees. Capacity-building areas include finance, procurement, project management, and reporting.

As a result of this capacity-building support, FURAT and its local partners have restored water access for more than 1.5 million people, rehabilitated 200 miles of sanitation networks, removed 25 million cubic feet of rubble, and exhumed more than 6,000 bodies. FURAT’s support for emergency response established fire brigades and protected agricultural crops like wheat and barley from wildfires in a region facing food shortages.

The program is funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and implemented by Creative Associates International.

 

Rehabilitation of Suwar Canal in northeast Syria

An Interactive Storymap
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One of the FURAT program’s key achievements has been the restoration of water access for Hasakah City, where water shortages had caused dissatisfaction with governance bodies and encouraged emigration from the region. Since January 2021, FURAT Plus has partnered with the Executive Council of Jazeera Region and the Deir Ezzor Civil Council to restore clean water infrastructure and address this growing instability. This large-scale water restoration initiative rehabilitated the Al-Suwar Canal, many miles of pipeline, pump and lift stations, and electrical infrastructure so the water system can operate sustainably. In addition to providing water to Hasakah City’s residents, this project feeds water into agricultural irrigation systems in the nearby countryside, improving irrigation conditions in a region reliant on the agricultural economy. Explore this project’s implementation through an engaging interactive storymap developed by the FURAT Plus project in collaboration with the Creative Development Lab.

Click on map to your left or click here to access the interactive storymap

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