Millions of people in north-west Syria are at risk of losing life-saving humanitarian aid if the UN Security Council does not renew a cross-border aid mechanism on Tuesday, aid organizations warn.
This agreement, which expires on January 10, allows aid to be sent from Turkey to areas controlled by jihadist and rebel groups in and around Idleb province without going through Bashar Al-Assad’s Syrian regime.
“The renewal of this resolution is crucial for the 4.1 million people trapped in north-west Syria,” Ammar Ammar of the UN Fund for Peace, a country at war, told AFP.
According to him, “humanitarian aid has become a lifeline, particularly for the displaced,” and “without cross-border UN access, hunger will increase […]”.
The mechanism was extended by just six months last July, a duration imposed by Moscow, an ally of Mr Assad, while the other members of the Security Council wanted a year.
Russia wants aid to go exclusively through regions under regime control and not through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing on the Turkish border, which serves more than 80% of the needs of the population of the jihadist and rebel areas .and will be closed, if the mechanism is not renewed.
But NGOs say the regime cannot be trusted to distribute aid fairly in areas beyond its control.
“Political tool”
For Amnesty International’s Diana Semaan, an end to aid would be “catastrophic because there is no alternative”.
Such a decision would prevent the delivery of vital aid, which the UN said had benefited around 2.7 million people a month in 2022.
Today, 90% of the Syrian population lives below the poverty line and 12.4 million people are food insecure, according to the UN.
“After more than 11 years of failure by the Syrian people, members of the Security Council should be guided by humanitarian rather than political imperatives,” said David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee. “This resolution is the bare minimum: Safe and predictable aid should be non-negotiable.”
In 2014, aid was able to reach Syria through four border crossings, but after years of pressure from Beijing and Moscow, only the Bab-al-Hawa post remained operational.
The last UN convoy under the mechanism arrived in the Idlib region on Sunday, according to an AFP correspondent on the ground.
“This crucial vote on Syria has become a tool for political negotiations,” lamented MSF Syria Operations Director Francisco Otero y Villar.
“death sentence”
The war that began in Syria in 2011 has fragmented the country. The regime has taken over most of the territory, Kurdish forces control large areas in the north and northeast, and about half of Idlib province and surrounding areas are dominated by jihadists.
On Sunday, medics held a sit-in in the Idleb region to call for the mechanism to be renewed.
A border closure would be “a medical disaster” that would shut down 41 health centers and make essential medicines for chronic diseases unavailable, official Houssam Korra Mohamed told AFP during the Idleb health services sit-in.
The UN warned that many people “would be without access to food and drinking water” if the operation were halted.
“Most are women and children who need help just to survive the depths of winter and in the midst of a severe cholera outbreak,” said a statement released by the heads of several UN bodies, including the World Health Organization (WHO ), was signed.
And according to Hiba Zayadin, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, ending this aid would be “a death sentence for many of those who depend on it.”