7744th Security Council Meeting: Situation in Middle East, Syria

Humanitarian affairs chief calls for weekly 48-hour ‘Pause’ in fighting to facilitate aid delivery to Syrians trapped in besieged cities, at 7744th meeting.

• Categories: Meetings & Events / Security Council
• Video Length: 02:35:51
• Production Date: 25 July 2016
• Asset Language: Arabic; Chinese; English; French; Russian; Spanish
• Personal Subject: STEPHEN O'BRIEN
• Subject Topical: CIVILIANS; CONFLICT SITUATION; HUMANITARIAN CRISIS; TERRORISM; VIOLENCE; WAR CRIMES
• Geographic Subject: MIDDLE EAST; SYRIA
• MAMS Id: 1680157
• Parent Id: 1679141

Description

Permanent Representative Blames Crisis on Neighbour for Keeping Border Open as Council Members Differ over Air Strike Casualties.

The United Nations humanitarian affairs chief called today for the immediate establishment of a weekly, 48-hour pause in fighting so that urgently needed assistance could reach 250,000 people trapped in besieged eastern Aleppo and other hard-to-reach places in Syria.

Stephen O’Brien, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, made the appeal as he briefed the Security Council on the situation in Syria, where he said overall humanitarian conditions were deteriorating amid rising levels of despair. “The international community simply cannot let eastern Aleppo city become yet another — and by far the biggest — besieged area,” he emphasized. “This is medieval and shameful. We must not allow this to happen.” He called on parties to the conflict, and those with influence over them, immediately to establish the proposed weekly “humanitarian pause” for eastern Aleppo, where fighting had shut down the Castello road, the only way into the district.

Turning to other parts of Syria, he said he was alarmed by reports of deteriorating humanitarian conditions and urgent medical-evacuation needs in several locations, including the towns of Madaya, Foah, Zabadani and Kefraya. Conditions at the Berm running along the border with Jordan were “baking hot, totally arid, a no man’s land of a barely living hell”. So far in 2016, he continued, humanitarian aid had reached more than 1 million people, but that was only a fraction of the 5.5 million people in besieged and hard-to-reach areas needing assistance. Access to them was constrained by an escalation in fighting and insecurity, while arbitrary restrictions and obstructions set limits on who received aid, where and how often. Even when the Syrian authorities approved access, permits issued centrally were not always honoured by security forces on the ground, he pointed out.

The briefing prompted comments from several Council members and from Syria’s representative, who said terrorism was “the basic cause of this crisis”. Noting that Aleppo had seen no military operations during the first year-and-a-half of the conflict, he said Turkey’s failure to respond to international calls for it to close its border with Syria had resulted in an influx of terrorists. Terrorists, not the Government, had closed the Castello road, and a lasting solution would entail combating terrorism by implementing Council resolutions, in cooperation with the Syrian Government and without double standards, hypocrisy or efforts to make Syria a magnet for terrorists in the future.

Several delegates expressed support for the proposed weekly 48-hour humanitarian pause, and condemned the recent beheading of a Palestinian boy by rebels. The representative of the United States noted that the Russian Federation had never acknowledged the possible involvement of its air force in air strikes that had resulted in civilian casualties. It was in a weak position to point fingers at the United States, she said, adding that she looked forward to that Government opening a single investigation into the strikes it had carried out.

The Russian Federation’s representative in turn expressed deep worry about reports of air strikes carried out by the United States-led coalition. Terrorists had been using the cessation of hostilities to bring in reinforcements from abroad and to recruit minors, he added, while calling for the lifting of unilateral sanctions imposed on Damascus, and proposing that people go to Damascus and “do something useful” rather than asking the Russian Federation to exert pressure on the Syrian Government.

France’s representative asked how the Council could accept to see Aleppo suffer the same fate as Sarajevo two decades ago. Resolution 2254 (2015) had set a 1 August deadline for establishing a transitional authority, he recalled, describing that as a test for the regime and its supporters. Aleppo had become a martyr city and also risked becoming the graveyard of the Vienna peace process, he warned.

Egypt’s representative said Syria was fertile ground for terrorist groups and foreign terrorist fighters, chaos and sectarianism. The only possible solution was a political one, based on resolutions 2254 (2015) and 2268 (2016). Egypt was committed to cooperating with the United States and the Russian Federation in the context of the International Syrian Support Group, he added, calling also for a time frame within which to list all groups collaborating openly with terrorist organizations for sanctions.

Angola’s representative said the fighting between Government forces and non-State armed groups should sharpen the Council’s focus on how such groups obtained arms, pointing out that regional and international stakeholders were not being held responsible for allowing the war to continue. The Council and the International Syria Support Group should step up efforts to cut off the flow of weapons into Syria and help to combat radicalism, he stressed.

Also speaking today were the representatives of United Kingdom, Uruguay, Ukraine, New Zealand, Spain, China, Venezuela, Senegal, Malaysia and Japan.

The meeting began at 10:05 a.m. and adjourned at 12:40 p.m.