Syria: Water as a Weapon: A Fourteen-Year Pattern in Syria

Jul 2, 2026
Centre for Information Resilience
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Access to water is a basic requirement for life and a right protected under international human rights law. It is also, throughout the history of armed conflict, one of the first things to be taken away. In Syria, water has functioned as a bargaining chip: cut off to punish civilian populations, seized to generate leverage, and in some cases weaponised directly through flooding or contamination. Evidence of these violations is now substantially documented.