Mission misaligned
Can the UN adapt to Syria’s new political order?

At a recent meeting in Doha of humanitarian and development actors involved with Syria, one message rang out louder than any other; that the UN’s credibility deficit in Syria is profound. 

Participants described the meeting, convened by Qatar Charity and UN OCHA to improve coordination between humanitarian and development actors, as oscillating between awkward and blunt critique. Some Syrian representatives ignored OCHA’s role altogether, while others called explicitly for a transfer of UN powers to Syrian organisations and the transitional government, and a general contraction of the UN footprint. According to one participant, a major Syrian NGO went so far as to question whether the presence of the many UN agencies in the country was needed at all. Najat Rochdi, the Deputy Special Envoy for Syria, is said to have deflected the criticism with a forceful defence of the UN in a way that participants considered tone-deaf and inappropriate.

A UN source had a different view, describing the critique as “relatively mild”. In Syrian political and civil society circles, however, mere mention of senior UN personnel such as Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Adam Abdelmoula, Special Envoy Geir Pedersen, or Najat Rochdi — widely seen as positioning herself to succeed Pedersen, according to several diplomats based in Damascus and Beirut — elicits the same response: they should all step down. 

Unaddressed grievances 
The UN Country Team’s approach is widely seen to have greatly assisted the Assad regime, in the guise of humanitarian pragmatism and by twisting the key principles of non-politicised humanitarian aid. The UN approach conferred undeserved legitimacy on a regime responsible for mass atrocities and also reinforced the self-fulfilling narrative that Assad was the only guarantor against state collapse. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, rarely commented on the atrocities committed by the Assad regime; while Pedersen is seen as having capitulated to key regime strategies, reinforcing the fiction that Assad had won the war and granting UN blessing for a wave of normalisation efforts. Syrian humanitarian partners also criticise UN agencies as riddled with inefficiency, corruption and internal turf wars.

Against that background, it is no surprise that after Assad’s fall in December 2024, the UN found itself isolated. Its current mandate remains legally anchored in UNSCR 2254, a decade-old resolution whose political framework is now widely viewed as obsolete. While the resolution’s principles for an inclusive transition process remain relevant, they were abandoned by most UN member states once Assad fell because they would have complicated what many governments quietly accepted: a swift takeover by the HTS-dominated interim government for the sake of what they perceived as stability. 

Engagement at its nadir
The Sharaa-led government, for its part, was eager to own the transition process lock, stock, and barrel. UN oversight was seen as undue meddling. As a result, engagement between the two was minimal. Damascus sources say that RC/HC Abdelmoula has not met with a single minister from the interim government. Sharaa has received Pedersen only a few times, and deep mistrust and absence of general cooperation remains. UNDP’s Abdallah Dardari, meanwhile, who previously worked with the Assad government to promote an “early recovery” agenda that critics argued was a thinly veiled reconstruction push, has received only lukewarm attention from the authorities. 

The UN’s desperation to secure relevance and donor-funded contracts was on full display when the Country Team hastily assembled a “Transitional Action Plan” (TAP) ahead of the Brussels Conference in March 2025. The document envisioned sweeping UN involvement in technical assistance, political advice, and almost every facet of state-building in the transitional period. The plan was summarily rejected by the interim government. TAP didn't just misread the mood in Damascus but revealed a UN system that still believed it could carry on with business as usual, despite having neither political leverage nor government buy-in. In February UN Secretary-General António Guterres launched an Integrated Strategic Assessment (ISA) to rethink the UN’s role in Syria. According to sources who met with the ISA team that visited Damascus, the mission was carried out by a small group of mid-level officers from UN headquarters in New York. It is said that their investigation was narrow in scope, raising a question as to whether it is adequate to guide the UN’s future mandate in Syria.

Relocating to Damascus
A diplomatic source in New York who was briefed on the ISA’s recommendations – which remain highly confidential – told Syria in Transition that they include the establishment of an integrated political mission in Damascus, partly to reclaim influence lost by the UN’s Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA.) Previous UN reforms gave the Resident Coordinator broad cross-cutting authority, which sidelined DPPA. Some member states support the idea of such a mission, hoping that it might hold the transitional government accountable – which might well be wishful thinking. 

Unless under Chapter 7 - which allows the Security Council to take enforcement measures to maintain or restore international peace and security - a Damascus-based UN political mission would require the consent of the transitional government. That is unlikely to be granted for any mandate that placed the transitional authorities under scrutiny, especially from an institution many Syrians view as complicit in their past suffering. If the UN pushes for the proposed mission, it will be chasing an illusion of relevance at the cost of further eroding its soft power. Without a robust mandate and government approval, such a mission might achieve very little. Its presence alone, however, would risk lending UN legitimacy to processes that might not be inclusive. That would not be in the interest of the UN, its member states, or indeed of Syrians themselves.

More is at stake, however, than the political mission as such. Syria’s humanitarian needs remain immense. Humanitarian and development assistance should continue, but Syria has a well-documented history of aid manipulation, and it is a matter of due diligence and operational integrity to learn from past mistakes. Access at any cost should be spurned. Assistance should adhere to humanitarian principles and be based on proper political risk assessments. UN agencies should coordinate and cooperate with governance authorities, but their operations should be grounded in independent needs assessments, international standards of transparency, and strong do-no-harm safeguards. This would require personnel changes. Senior UN figures who worked closely with the Assad government cannot simply be recycled. They lack credibility among the transitional authorities and within civil society. If the UN wants to act as a model of accountability, it must demonstrate that internally first. Otherwise, reconciliation with the Syrian government and society will remain elusive. 

A new mandate
If the Security Council is serious about a meaningful and effective UN role in Syria it must craft a new mandate grounded in present-day realities. The Country Team should operate under rigorous standards and a reformed accountability framework. The proposed political mission should be based outside Syria, with genuine independence from the transitional authorities. Any new resolution should spell out clearly what the Council expects from the transition, and these expectations should be rooted in human rights principles. The Council should empower a new Special Envoy with a proven track record to support a Syrian-led, Syrian-owned transition process. Such support should involve accountability of both international governments and the Syrian transitional authorities. 

The UN claims expertise in managing political transitions, yet its record is mostly academic “What Syria doesn't need is a parade of junior UN staff playing shadow diplomats, cosplaying as crisis negotiators”, a Damascus-based Gulf diplomat told Syria in Transition. If the goal was merely technical support for elections, constitutional reform or legislative work, this could be delivered far more cost-effectively by private actors such as the British organisation Intermediate, whose advisors are already operating out of the Presidential Palace.

What the UN can uniquely offer is legitimacy and accountability. It must not trade that for access or bureaucratic relevance. What the UN needs is an Envoy with real weight and credibility, someone who cannot be ignored by al-Sharaa or sidestepped by member states. 

The finalisation of the Integrated Strategic Assessment offers an opportunity for the Secretary-General and senior UN leadership to bring this discussion to the Security Council. “Business as usual” is no longer an option. 

Observers are not confident of change. “Do we believe the Secretary-General will act?”, a former senior UN official asked rhetorically. “In truth, he won’t.”