DM Monitoring
LONDON: The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has called for a renewal of U.N. Security Council authorization for cross-border aid operations from Turkey to northwest Syria.
In a statement released, OCHA said that “millions of people are pressed up against the border in an active war zone in northwest Syria and remain in need of humanitarian aid to survive. The U.N. needs cross-border and cross-line access to reach those most in need.”
OCHA emphasized that a failure to do so would immediately stop U.N. delivery of food, COVID-19 vaccines, critical medical supplies, shelter, protection, clean water, sanitation and other life-saving assistance to 3.4 million people, including 1 million children.
It added that “the U.N. continues engagement with all concerned parties to also allow cross-line convoys into the northwest.
They are critical for the expansion of the overall response, but even if deployed regularly they could not replicate the size and scope of the cross-border operation.”
Highlighting that there is simply no alternative, the statement said a large-scale U.N. cross-border response for an additional 12 months remains essential to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in northwest Syria.
Access for cross-border aid from Turkey was reduced last year to just one crossing point after opposition from Russia and China – permanent Security Council members – to renewing other crossings.
There is expected to be another showdown over the issue at the U.N. Security Council next month as Washington and several other members of the 15-member Security Council are pushing to expand the cross-border operation, which U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock has described as a “lifeline” for some 3 million Syrians in the country’s north, more than half of whom depend on food aid.
All of that filters through the Bab al-Hawa crossing where currently around 1,000 U.N. trucks enter a month through Turkey. The U.N. Security Council first authorized a cross-border aid operation by U.N. and nongovernmental organizations into Syria in 2014 at four points. Last year, it reduced that access to one crossing point from Turkey due to opposition from Russia and China over renewing all four.
