NEW YORK: UN agencies have underscored their commitment to continue supporting civilians hit by the war in Syria, which this month enters its tenth year.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a statement Thursday evening, declaring that “we cannot allow the tenth year to result in the same carnage, the same flouting of human rights and international humanitarian law.” The UN chief highlighted the need for a peaceful solution to the crisis in a message posted on his Twitter account.
“The conflict in Syria is entering its tenth year. A decade of fighting has brought nothing but ruin and misery. And civilians are paying the gravest price. There is no military solution. Now it is the time to give diplomacy a chance to work”, he wrote.
Overall, more than 11 million people across Syria require aid relief, nearly half of them children, according to latest estimates.
Fighting has displaced more than six million people inside Syria, sometimes repeatedly, while another five million Syrians are living as refugees in neighbouring countries. “The Syrian conflict has entered its tenth year, yet peace still remains far too elusive. The brutal conflict has exacted an unconscionable human cost and caused a humanitarian crisis of monumental proportions”, said Guterres. “Millions of civilians continue to face protection risks…We have seen nine years of horrific atrocities, including war crimes. Nine years of human rights abuses on a massive and systematic scale, eroding international norms to new depths of cruelty and suffering.
“Tens of thousands are missing, disappeared, detained, subjected to ill-treatment and torture. Untold numbers have been killed and injured. There must be no impunity for such horrific crimes”, the UN chief said.
The “brutal simplicity” of these numbers belies the complexity of the crisis, according to UN Humanitarian Coordinator, Mark Lowcock.
“In the northwest, women and children are sleeping in the open and fleeing bombs. In the northeast, children have spent their entire lives in camps. Elsewhere across the country, people’s prospects and hope for the future are being gradually eroded in the face of economic crisis”, he said.
The situation in Idlib governorate, in northwest Syria, remains a pressing concern for the humanitarian community.–Agencies
