It has been four months since Dalal Jomaa Hasan’s home in northwest Syria was destroyed by an earthquake, marking the sixth time she was forced to uproot her family since the outbreak of war in 2011. 

The sturdy cement walls provided a few years of protection from winter downpours and boiling summers for 52-year-old Hasan and her 13 children and grandchildren, but they couldn’t withstand the quakes that decimated the region on 6 February, killing more than 50,000 people across Syria and Türkiye.

Sheltering in a small tent pieced together with tarps and blankets, Hasan and her family are now struggling to get enough to eat. The economic aftershocks of the earthquakes and runaway inflation mean they’re facing rising food prices, but dwindling food aid that officials blame on low funding levels also plays its part. 

Hunger has been rising for years in northwest Syria: The UN estimated at the end of 2022 that 3.3 million people, or 70% of the region’s population, were food insecure.

Hasan, who must battle to even afford basic staples and says the only aid the family received since the quake was a basket of emergency non-food items like blankets and sponges, feels abandoned. “Everyone let us down,” she told The New Humanitarian.

On a fire of wood and cardboard next to her Idlib tent, she boiled water to make a bulgur wheat kernel and yoghurt dish, preparing food that must sustain her large family for three or four days.

Most days, she eats nothing but bread. “We, the adults, can be patient and not eat, but the kids, they can’t,” she said. “They cry, and they can’t go long without meals.”