Au revoir, Geneva
All change at the OSE as Pedersen looks to resign

The Syrian government was informed in mid-August of the UN Secretary-General’s decision fully to relocate the Office of the Special Envoy (OSE) from Geneva to Damascus. Sources familiar with the process say that the Secretary-General neither consulted the Security Council nor the Sharaa government beforehand. The move looks less like a thought-through strategy than a broad cost-cutting measure under the UN80 agenda — and a step to please member states who believe that proximity equals impact.

Integration desires
The Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA) is now tasked with implementing the decision. For years DPPA has been uneasy with the Resident Coordinator (RC) and his Country Team taking the lead in day-to-day engagement with Damascus. Under Assad, the RC’s office became the default interface for government institutions. Even under the new authorities, who treat the UN Country Team with high scepticism, the RC’s network of contacts remains deeper than that of the OSE. From Geneva, the OSE has drifted to the margins, its role largely reduced to Security Council briefings and broad calls for an inclusive transition, with little capacity to shape events on the ground.

It’s no surprise, then, that in a recent strategic assessment DPPA argued for an “integrated mission” — a model that would place political, humanitarian, and development tracks under a single Special Representative of the Secretary-General. Conceived in the early 2000s after the Brahimi reforms, the idea was designed to overcome the UN’s chronic fragmentation. Such a mission, however, would require a new Security Council resolution on Syria, something the P5 appear to be too divided to deliver.

Relocation risks
With integration blocked, three options remained: keep the OSE in Geneva and marginalised; regardless of the location, test the full scope of UNSCR 2254, which still grants authority for mediation and oversight; or relocate to Damascus. Geir Pedersen, expected to be out by year’s end, has never pressed the outer limits of his mandate and was unlikely to stage any late fight. Relocation, then, became the path of least resistance even though it is an option weak in substance.

“This is not about symbolism — it is about ensuring Syrians get direct support and that the UN is present and attuned to the challenges and opportunities facing the political transition throughout the country,” Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the Secretary-General, told Syria in Transition, adding that the transition “must be grounded in inclusion, transparency, and accountability, fully anchored in the principles of resolution 2254.”

That is the theory. In practice, relocating the OSE to Damascus will expose it to the same constraints that long crippled the UN Country Team: government control of visas, access, and approvals, and any engagement with civil society under government scrutiny. Independence — the minimum for credible political work — will be difficult to sustain. The Secretary-General has yet to offer more than the generic line that “to best serve Syrians, engagement must take place on the ground and across the country.” By aligning political, humanitarian, and development work under one chain of command, an integrated mission could have leveraged the UN’s presence more effectively. It might also have impacted constructively on member states, whose own political, humanitarian, and development pillars tend to remain fragmented, allowing Syrian governments to play agencies off against one another.

Divided they will stall
The relocation also sets the stage for renewed turf battles within the UN. Since the 2018 reforms, Resident Coordinators have reported to the Deputy Secretary-General in New York, while Special Envoys answered directly to the Secretary-General. Both claim to represent “the UN” in their domain, almost guaranteeing rivalry. Concepts such as the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus (HDP-Nexus) have aimed to improve alignment, but as long as the hierarchy and reporting lines in a highly competitive institution like the UN remain untouched, that will be hard to achieve. An integrated mission would not end these battles, but it would at least impose rules of engagement. By relocating the OSE under the UNSCR 2254 mandate, however, the Secretary-General arguably has produced the worst of both worlds: an OSE more vulnerable to pressure from Damascus, and a UN still split against itself.

The OSE is being sent to Damascus with neither leverage nor a clear mission. UNSCR 2254, the basis of its mandate, is widely seen as outdated: it lays out broad principles for an inclusive, Syrian-led transition but does not reflect the profound changes in Syria since 8 December. Its principles may be timeless, but it provides no clear or enforceable steps, leaving the OSE effectively powerless. This gap mirrors the divisions within the international community over Syria. In practice, UNSCR 2254 has become a zombie resolution: not alive, yet not entirely dead. In the absence of an alternative, and amidst the ongoing scramble over Syria’s future, many governments, especially within the P5, may find it convenient to keep it on life support, using its anti-terror provisions as a joker. Any power consolidation in Damascus that they dislike can be countered with the “terrorism” card, delegitimising the Sharaa government when and if convenient. 

To protect both the UN and its mission in Syria, the Secretary-General might be better served by raising the issues of the OSE’s location, and the UN’s broader engagement, in the Security Council. Without agreement there, any UN mission would remain hard-pressed.