UNITED NATIONS (AP) – For the first time in 12 years of war in Syria, residents of every district are experiencing some degree of “humanitarian stress” and 15.3 million people, or nearly 70% of the population, have need for humanitarian assistance, according to the United States. Nations said on Tuesday.
A UN appeal for $5.4 billion to help more than 14 million people in Syria is less than 10% funded and the UN World Food Program has warned that without additional money, 2.5 million people are at risk of losing food or cash assistance from July.
The dire humanitarian situation, aggravated by the February earthquake that devastated the rebel-held northwest, was explained to the Security Council by the director of operations of the UN humanitarian office, Edem Wosornu.
The Syrian people “are increasingly dependent on humanitarian aid as basic services and critical infrastructure are on the brink of collapse”, she said.
Wosornu called for generous pledges and quick release of funds at a conference organized by the European Union in Brussels on June 14-15. She said “Syrians need the support of the international community now more than at any time in the past 12 years.”
She said the need to keep humanitarian aid flowing in the northwest is even more critical after the earthquake. She said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had called for a 12-month extension of the UN’s mandate, which expires in July, saying aid was ‘indispensable’ and ‘a matter of life or death for millions of people” in the region.
Russian UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, whose country is a close ally of Syria, said Moscow shared his concerns about the deteriorating humanitarian situation. But he said cross-border aid provision “has lost its usefulness” and “we see no reason to expand it”.
Nebenzia expressed concern that while cross-border aid was being channeled and funded, the appeal to help millions more in need in Syria was only 9 percent funded. It is “a very strange moral imperative”, if the aid “only applies to terrorists in Idlib and does not apply to the country as a whole”.
US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the United States would seek a council resolution to expand aid deliveries to the three border crossings currently in operation: Bab Al-Hawa, which was the single crossing that Russia would allow to remain open in January, as well as Bab Al-Salam and Al Raée, which Syrian President Bashar Assad agreed to open after the earthquake, which killed more than 6,000 people in Syria and displaced more than 330,000. Assad agreed to keep the two additional crossings open until August 13.
The US envoy accused Assad of “cynically” trying to “seize the influx of international support following the earthquakes to reclaim his place on the world stage”, pointing out that “just sitting at the same table that other regional leaders are doing nothing to help the people of Syria”.
“If the Assad regime wants to help the Syrian people, it must act immediately and announce that it will keep the Bab Al-Salam and Al Raee crossings open until at least August 2024, or as long as ‘it will have to,’ Thomas-Greenfield said. . “And even if the Assad regime does the right thing, that frankly does not replace the actions of this council, which has a responsibility to meet the dire humanitarian needs of the Syrian people.”
Assad was welcomed into the Arab League this month after a 12-year suspension. Geir Pedersen, the UN special envoy for Syria, told the Security Council that this meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, as well as others in Moscow and Amman, which included Syrian officials, could create a new impetus in the long-standing efforts to end the conflict.
He reiterated that further diplomatic activity “could act as a circuit breaker in the search for a political solution in Syria – if there is constructive engagement in Syria, and indeed if key regional groups and actors and international organizations can work together”.