Nazih Osseiran

Around a dozen Syrian women sat in a circle at a U.N.-funded centre in Damascus, happy to share stories about their daily struggles, but their bonding was overshadowed by fears that such meet-ups could soon end due to international aid cuts.

The community centre, funded by the United Nations' refugee agency (UNHCR), offers vital services that families cannot get elsewhere in a country scarred by war, with an economy broken by decades of mismanagement and Western sanctions.

Since Bashar al-Assad was ousted by Islamist rebels last December, more than 500,000 refugees have returned to Syria, hoping to rebuild lives upended by 13 years of civil war and financial collapse during the former president's brutal rule.

But for many the homecoming is bittersweet with little support available in a land scarred by war and whose economy has been broken by decades of mismanagement and Western sanctions.

Behind a ramshackle mosque in Hissa, north Lebanon, the living are making a home for themselves among the dead.

Beside mounds of garbage in the shade of towering trees, men, women and children from Syria's minority Alawite community seek shelter among the graves surrounding the half-built mosque - grateful to have escaped the sectarian violence at home but fearing for their future.

As word of President Donald Trump's pledge to lift sanctions spread, the streets of Damascus began to echo with the sound of fireworks, gunfire and car horns as Syrians celebrated the prospect of an end to decades of financial isolation.

Small shop owners dreamt of fresh stock to fill their depleted shelves and aid workers hoped they might finally tackle the blanket of rubble that smothers Syria's big cities.

Amal al-Merhi's twin 10-month-old daughters often go without milk or diapers.

She feeds them a mix of cornstarch and water because milk is too expensive. Instead of diapers, Merhi ties plastic bags around her babies' waists.

The effects of their poverty is clear, she said.

Amputations without anaesthetic, donkeys carting patients to hospitals and silent death in a land free of food - this is Gaza today, said the head of the Palestine Red Crescent Society.

With his emergency responders under mortal attack and not a grain of rice nor vial of medicine now entering Gaza, the Red Crescent chief said life in the blockaded territory was the toughest it had ever been in nearly 19 months of war.

When Bashar al-Assad was forced out of power by rebels in Syria, Jude Khouja and his Syrian friends in the U.S. felt they had to do something to help rebuild a country dear to them after decades of brutal rule and conflict.

They spent the days after Assad's overthrow in December talking on WhatsApp about their options under the new Islamist rulers who said they want to establish a free market economy and open Syria for foreign investment.

Every day, children in the West Bank run the gauntlet of Israeli roadblocks, checkpoints and settler attacks on their way to school.

Since Israel launched a major operation in the West Bank in January, the trip has become even more perilous. Thousands of troops are sweeping through refugee camps and cities and demolishing houses and infrastructure, including roads children use to get to school.

Children have returned to school in Gaza, taking classes in tents or in the rubble of schools where families sheltered during the war, but trauma, aid blockades and the threat of more fighting could derail their drive to learn.

At least 14,500 children were killed in the war and thousands wounded, according to UNICEF. More than 400 teachers were also killed, the U.N. says, and now most of Gaza's children need mental health support for trauma, aid agencies say.

The Human Rights Watch researcher for Saudi Arabia said U.N. organisers of a major internet summit in Riyadh threatened to eject her from the event for mentioning a jailed Saudi teacher and later censored a video containing criticism of the kingdom.

More than 9,000 participants from 170 countries took part in the United Nations' Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in the Saudi capital in December to discuss "policies for a safe, inclusive and innovative digital future," according to the U.N.