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GENEVA / SYRIA HUMANITARIAN
STORY: GENEVA / SYRIA HUMANITARIAN
TRT: 02:36
SOURCE: UNTV CH
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 30 OCTOBER 2015, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND / FILE
FILE - GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1. Aerial shot, Palais des Nations
30 OCTOBER 2015, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
2. Med shot, press briefing room
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Jens Laerke, Spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA):
“There are some 6.5 million internally displaced people. I know we heard many times from our colleagues at UNHCR, I believe there is more than 4.2 million refugees which have coming out of Syria. More than 11 million people inside Syria are in need of health assistance and nearly 9 million people are unable to meet their basic food needs.”
4. Med shot, journalists
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Jens Laerke, Spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA):
“Of those who are in hard to reach areas, almost 400 000, exactly 393 700 people are living on the siege. And so far, this year, the UN has only been able to reach 3.6 percent of those with health assistance and only half a percent of those people on the siege with food in recent months.”
6. Med shot, journalists
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Jens Laerke, Spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA):
“So far this year, only 23 of 85 convoy requests that were made by the UN have been approved in principle by the Syrian ministry of Foreign Affairs. Only 23 were approved. And listen, half of those which were approved have been able to actually proceed due to a combination of lack of final security clearances from the authorities, like a safe passage from non-state armed opposition groups and general insecurity.”
8. Wide shot, journalists
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Jens Laerke, Spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA):
“Those in besieged areas, in the nature of things, we have very, very limited information about what the situation is for them. Because they are besieged, we cannot access them. We can only say that what we have delivered, we know what we have delivered. And we know what we have quite a good hand on how many people are there. That is why we can say only 0.5 percent were reached with aid. But what the general situation is in terms of their health, their physical and mental health, their nutritional status, their access to water, their access to education for the kids, all this kind of things, it is very, very, difficult to get it because we don’t have access.”
10. Close up, journalists
Some 13.5 million people are in need of some sort of protection and humanitarian assistance in Syria, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) today (30 Oct) in Geneva.
OCHA’s spokesperson Jens Laerke told reporters that more than 6 million of those are children. OCHA concluded that this is an increase of some 1.2 million in just 10 months.
Referring to a recent briefing to the Security Council made by the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Stephen O'Brien, Laerke said that “there are some 6.5 million internally displaced people. I know we heard many times from our colleagues at UNHCR, I believe there is more than 4.2 million refugees which have coming out of Syria. More than 11 million people inside Syria are in need of health assistance and nearly 9 million people are unable to meet their basic food needs.”
Humanitarian access to people in need remains highly constrained. Four and a half million people live in hard-to-reach areas and the UN has been able to reach only a small fraction as a result of active conflict, shifting front lines, bureaucratic hurdles, and conditions imposed by the parties.
Jens Laerke said that “of those who are in hard to reach areas, almost 400,000, exactly 393,700 people are living on the siege. And so far, this year, the UN has only been able to reach 3.6 percent of those with health assistance and only 0.5 percent of those people on the siege with food in recent months.”
He continued saying that “so far this year, only 23 of 85 convoy requests that were made by the UN have been approved in principle by the Syrian ministry of Foreign Affairs. Only 23 were approved. And listen, half of those which were approved have been able to actually proceed due to a combination of lack of final security clearances from the authorities, like a safe passage from non-state armed opposition groups and general insecurity.”
The UN estimates that some 200,000 people live under siege in Deir-ez-Zor city by ISIL; some 181,200 people by the Syrian Government in various locations in eastern Ghutah, as well as Darayya and Zabadani in Rural Damascus; and some 12,500 people by non-State armed opposition groups and the Nusrah Front in Foah and Kefraya in Idlib.
OCHA’s Jens Laerke said that “those in besieged areas, in the nature of things, we have very very limited information about what the situation is for them. Because they are besieged, we cannot access them. We can only say that what we have delivered, we know what we have delivered. And we know what we have quite a good hand on how many people are there. That is why we can say only 0,5 percent were reached with aid. But what the general situation is in terms of their health, their physical and mental health, their nutritional status, their access to water, their access to education for the kids, all this kind of things, it is very very difficult to get it because we don’t have access”.
The 26,500 people in Nubul and Zahra, in Aleppo governorate, are no longer considered besieged following consistent and credible reports that access to and from the enclave for people and commercial goods have significantly improved over the last three months, although access remains challenging and protection concerns acute.
OCHA also informed that as of 28 October, the funding gap of the UN-coordinated inter-agency appeal is USD 10.8 billion which means that half of the required funds remain unmet. Humanitarian organizations aim to reach 82 million people across 38 countries in 2015.
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