Over the course of just three days earlier this month nearly 145,000 people fled their homes to rush to the Turkish border. More than 80,000 people are now living in open fields covered in snow, exposed to northern Syria’s freezing winter.

Save the Children’s Syria  Director Sonia Khush, said: “As more civilians desperately seek safety on Syria’s border with Turkey, we’re worried that the death toll will increase given the absolutely inhumane living conditions that women and children are finding themselves in, with sub-zero temperatures, no roof over their heads and no warm clothes. Even when they do manage to find a tent, a heater, and a mattress, they risk being asphyxiated by their heating equipment or seeing their shelter burn down.”

The vast majority of people displaced are children and women, who have been forced to flee with just the clothes they are wearing. To keep warm, they resort to burning plastic and other combustible materials, when they can’t find wood.

Since the escalation of conflict in December 2019, the humanitarian situation has reached an intolerable level. The area, which was already

highly vulnerable and has seen the displacement of more than 950,000 people in just over two months. While some of the newly displaced are moving northwards to Azaz, Afrin, and other sub-districts in northern Aleppo.

Even when displaced, civilian populations are not safe. Landmines and improvised explosive devices dot the landscape. Every step people take is a risk. In these informal settlements, children and women are at particular risk of violence and exploitation. Makeshift toilets offer no safety or privacy.

In the northwest, 280,000 children have had their education cruelly snatched away. And an estimated 180 schools are out of operation — destroyed, damaged or being used for shelters. Another blow to children’s hopes and futures.

As stated by the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mark Lowcock: “They arrive in a place thought to be safe, only for the bombs to follow.". With sub-zero temperatures, reports continue of children freezing to death and people huddling in caves and under plastic sheets to keep warm and safe. Local service providers and humanitarian actors working in the area has

rapidly mobilized to respond to the escalating crisis. However, they lack the required resources to meet the exponential increase in need and are facing significant logistic and security challenges that inhibit their operations.

The exodus is the largest of a war that has displaced 13 million people and taken hundreds of thousands of lives and ranks among the largest in recent history. With about three million residents trapped between a sealed Turkish border to the north and bombs and shells thundering up from the south and east, the crisis has the potential to grow far worse as the government battles to reclaim all of Syria.

 Max Baldwin, the North Syria program director for Mercy Corps said you’ve got the Turkish military here, the front line moving there, they’re continuing to target hospitals — it’s creating a level of fear and uncertainty that’s been a huge challenge for everyone. And this could get worse.”

 doubled Idlib’s population, turning it into a crowded stew of transplanted dissidents and their families and an array of jihadist and rebel groups who exploited the chaos to seize political control.

Syria’s uprising began in a flare of hope almost exactly nine years ago. Now, amid one of the worst humanitarian emergencies of the war, some of those who chanted for freedom and dignity in 2011..

Already the effective winner of Syria’s civil war, President Bashar al-Assad is closer than ever to retake Syria’s last rebel-held territory, Idlib Province in northwest Syria, a milestone that will clinch his victory even as it deepens his people’s suffering. Over the past three months, his forces, backed by Russian airstrikes, have intensified their assault on the province, driving nearly a million residents toward the border with Turkey.

Across the country, the nine-year war has decimated public services. Over half of all health facilities, and three out of 10 schools, are non-functional.

The economy is in freefall — with the destruction of physical capital costing an estimated $120 billion, and half a trillion in

economic losses. And the Syrian pound has lost nearly 50 per cent of its value in the last year.

But the true cost of the darnage is not measured in lost infrastructure or economic devastation. .

In the 11 million people across Syria who still require urgent humanitarian assistance. Almost half are children.

In the 6.5 million Syrians going hungry every day because of food insecurity. The price of essential food items has risen 20 times since the war began. Devastating for a country in which 80 per cent of people already live below the poverty line.

Families are forced to sell off their household assets — or send their children to work — just to meet basic necessities.

Children are going without vital immunizations, medical treatments or other health services because of high costs or gaps in service.

6.7 million refugees have fled Syria since the war began, and 6.2 million — and counting —are internally displaced. Almost a decade of war has forced nearly half of the country’s population from their homes.

And most of all, we measure this global failure in the innocent lives lost and broken by the conflict.

In 2018, over 1,100 children were killed in the fighting — the highest number of children killed in a single year since the start of the war. Last year was scarcely better — about 900 were killed and hundreds maimed.

And these are only those we could verify. The true number is much higher.