Feb 10,2023:The United States has issued a six-month sanctions exemption for all transactions related to providing disaster relief to Syria after earthquakes killed more than 22,000 people in the war-battered country and neighbouring Turkey.
“I want to make very clear that US sanctions in Syria will not stand in the way of life-saving efforts for the Syrian people,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said after the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued the exemption on Thursday.
Adeyemo pointed out that US sanctions already provide exemptions for humanitarian efforts, and according to Karam Shaar, a Syrian economist and non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, the most recent exemption will have “a limited positive impact”.
“This makes it easier still to send humanitarian funding to Syria,” Shaar told Al Jazeera. “Now you don’t have to prove to OFAC that your transaction is exempt from sanctions. You do the transaction, and then if you’re asked to, you need to prove it.”
Simply put, this means that donors and organisations don’t need to spend resources and time proving an exemption from sanctions before sending aid.
It was unclear, however, whether it will do much to assuage the fears of private institutions making money transfers, which often avoid working with Syria out of fear they will run afoul of sanction rules, the analyst said.
