Deprivation of Bread and Energy: Policies Deepening Poverty in Syria
This paper argues that current policies to liberalize bread and energy prices in Syria do not constitute economic reform in any developmental sense, but rather deepen poverty, undermine food security, and threaten the social legitimacy of the transition. Treating wheat, bread and energy as expenditure items whose subsidies can be cut and prices raised represents a dangerous departure from the social and political significance of food and production. When wheat is priced below cost, bread is governed by market logic, energy by profit, and wages are expected to absorb all these conditions, the outcome is not recovery but a poorer society with less capacity to produce. The Syrian Initiative for Fundamental Rights therefore calls for a transitional social protection approach that guarantees access to bread, energy and housing as basic requirements for a dignified life, while linking support for producers, wages and services to the actual cost of living and poverty lines.
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