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UN / SYRIA UPDATE
STORY: UN / SYRIA UPDATE
TRT: 03:26
SOURCE: UNIFEED-UNTV
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / RUSSIAN / ARABIC / NATS
DATELINE: 22 AUGUST 2016, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
RECENT, NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, exterior, UN headquarters
22 AUGUST 2016, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, Security Council
3. Med shot, delegates
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Stephen O'Brien, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief:
“When hospital attacks have become the new normal; when medieval sieges of entire cities and neighbourhoods have become a lasting reality for hundreds of thousands of people; this Council cannot look the other way. It needs to act and insure the full implementation of all its resolutions. For as long as there is impunity, this unprecedented scale of abuses and violations will simply not decline.”
5. Med shot, Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Stephen O'Brien, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief:
“Just pause for a moment and imagine this was your child, a child that has known nothing but horrific war. And his brother is dead. Omran was the ‘lucky one,’ according to a local doctor; lucky, what a word in such a context. That is the reality of what is at stake this morning here in this chamber. Not the politicking and posturing, the power games and defensiveness. All we need is for the guns to fall silent.”
7. Med shot, delegates
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Stephen O'Brien, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief:
“I welcome the announcement by the Russian Federation on 18 August to support the call for a 48 hour ceasefire. We are clear that anything shorter would not allow us to respond meaningfully to the size of the need we are facing either in Eastern or Western Aleppo today. While this statement is positive, this cannot be a one-sided offer. I have consistently said that any pause also needed to include the clear security assurances from all parties to the conflict.”
9. Med shot, delegates
10. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Vitaly Churkin Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations:
“We stress that focusing effort on counterterrorism does not mean that we underplay the importance of providing humanitarian aid or preventing or prevent it from happening. I would like to recall that with the Syrian government we have established six corridors for the population who if they wish can leave East Aleppo. However, in order to ensure a lasting resolution to the humanitarian situation in Aleppo, it is vital not to allow the use of the humanitarian channels for supplying terrorists with munitions and weapons."
11. Med shot delegates
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Michele J. Sison, Deputy Representative of the United States to the United Nations:
“This is the regime Russia is supporting with its own airstrikes and military advisers. The fighting is getting worse, and so are the humanitarian consequences.
The Assad regime has failed month after month to provide for unfettered humanitarian access. This month, no UN convoys have departed, largely because of the Assad regime’s absurd bureaucratic obstructions. The regime has allowed no assistance – none – for the people of eastern Aleppo this month. That affects up to 275,000 Syrians under siege.”
13. Med shot, delegates
14. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Bashar Ja'afari, Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations:
“Civilians do not flee to regions controlled by the terrorists, rather to regions controlled by the state, by the government, which provides 75 percent of all humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people. 75 percent is provided by the Syrian government, not OCHA.”
15. Wide shot, Security Council
Briefing on Syria, United Nations (UN) Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O'Brien, today (22 Aug) said the Security Council “cannot look the other way” when “hospital attacks have become the new normal; when medieval sieges of entire cities and neighbourhoods have become a lasting reality for hundreds of thousands of people.”
O’Brien said the Council “needs to act and insure the full implementation of all its resolutions,” adding that “as long as there is impunity, this unprecedented scale of abuses and violations will simply not decline.”
Commenting on the widely seen photograph of Omran, a young Syrian boy that survived a bombing in Aleppo, O’Brien said “just pause for a moment and imagine this was your child, a child that has known nothing but horrific war. And his brother is dead. Omran was the ‘lucky one,’ according to a local doctor; lucky, what a word in such a context. That is the reality of what is at stake this morning here in this chamber. Not the politicking and posturing, the power games and defensiveness. All we need is for the guns to fall silent.”
The Under-Secretary-General reiterated the call for a 48-hour ceasefire, stressing that anything shorter would not allow for a meaningful response.
He welcomed the announcement by the Russian Federation to support the call for a 48 hour ceasefire, but noted that “while this statement is positive, this cannot be a one-sided offer. I have consistently said that any pause also needed to include the clear security assurances from all parties to the conflict.”
For his part, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin stressed that “focusing effort on counterterrorism does not mean that we underplay the importance of providing humanitarian aid or preventing or prevent it from happening.”
He said “with the Syrian government we have established six corridors for the population who if they wish can leave East Aleppo. However, in order to ensure a lasting resolution to the humanitarian situation in Aleppo, it is vital not to allow the use of the humanitarian channels for supplying terrorists with munitions and weapons."
United States Deputy Representative Michele J. Sison said “the Assad regime has failed month after month to provide for unfettered humanitarian access. This month, no UN convoys have departed, largely because of the Assad regime’s absurd bureaucratic obstructions. The regime has allowed no assistance – none – for the people of eastern Aleppo this month. That affects up to 275,000 Syrians under siege.”
Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari said “civilians do not flee to regions controlled by the terrorists, rather to regions controlled by the state, by the government, which provides 75 percent of all humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people. 75 percent is provided by the Syrian government, not OCHA.”
According to O’Brien, the UN is ready to move 70 trucks of assistance into eastern Aleppo, as soon as the necessary security assurances are received.
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