A recent United Nations report that warned the Assad regime is "exterminating" civilians in Syria at alarming rates is an understatement compared to a new report from the Syrian Center for Policy Research. While other UN numbers, which the group stopped collecting in mid-2015, indicated at least 250,000 had died during the nearly five-year conflict, the SCPR's "Confronting Fragmentation" analysis paints a more "catastrophic" picture: 470,000 dead from the war and almost 1.9 million wounded, meaning 11.5% of the country's population has been killed or injured from the continuing crisis. Of the deaths, the report attributed about 400,000 to violence, with the remainder due to war-induced conditions such as hunger and illness. Life expectancy, meanwhile, has plummeted from 70.5 in 2010 to just over 55 in 2015.
And while the human toll in Syria is devastating enough, the country has been rocked in almost every other way as well: The report—which is careful not to criticize the Syrian government or its allies directly, per the Guardian—notes that "infrastructure and institutions, human and physical capital, and the wealth of the nation have almost all been obliterated." Estimates put the overall economic loss so far at $255 billion. About 45% of Syrians have fled their homes, with 3.1 million refugees and 1.1 million migrants taking off for other countries in search of better lives. "Human development, rights, and dignity have been comprehensively ruined," the report reads, cynically adding: "Despite the fact that Syrians have been suffering for … five years, global attention to human rights and dignity for them has intensified only when the crisis has a direct impact on developed countries' societies." (Russia is now calling for a Syrian ceasefire—but not until March.)
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