Media Home
UN Web TV
UN PhotoUN / SYRIA
STORY: UN / SYRIA
TRT: 6:18
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ARABIC / ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 18 SEPTEMBER 2025, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE – NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, exterior, United Nations Headquarters
18 SEPTEMBER 2025, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, Security Council
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Geir Pedersen, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria:
“Syria urgently requires international material assistance on a scale commensurate with its needs and ambition. We need to see the private sector’s footprint back in Syria including through nurturing Syria’s domestic private sector, to ensure that what exists survives and thrives. To achieve this will require more support from the region and the wider international community, and sustained sanctions and export controls relief, reassurance to banks and companies, and an accelerated path of domestic reforms. It also, of course, requires political stability.”
4. Wide shot, Security Council
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Geir Pedersen, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria:
“This kind of external intervention is unacceptable and must stop. We must insist on full respect for Syria’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity, and that any security concerns are addressed based on international law, the 1974 agreement, and diplomatic dialogue.”
6. Wide shot, Security Council
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Geir Pedersen, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria:
“It is absolutely vital that solutions are found that both safeguard the sovereignty, unity, independence and territorial integrity of Syria, and address the legitimate and understandable fears among the Druze community about their safety, human rights and political future within Syria, and that the state acts only as a protector and not as a threat. Given the deep distrust and polarization, this situation needs confidence-building measures and continued dialogue and diplomatic support.”
8. Wide shot, Security Council
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Geir Pedersen, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria:
“Syria is without a legislature, and while regulatory authority can be exercised via Presidential decree, the establishment of a credible interim legislative body is an important step so that urgent areas of reform during the transition can be addressed.”
10. Wide shot, Security Council
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator:
“Syria remains by any metric one of the largest humanitarian emergencies globally. More than 70 per cent of the population needs some form of humanitarian aid. More than nine million people are acutely food insecure. Some seven million people are still displaced internally, and more than four million are refugees in neighbouring countries.”
12. Wide shot, Security Council
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator:
“First, preserve stability. Only your consistent sustained engagement to prevent renewed violence can create conditions for recovery. Second, fund the humanitarian response. Help us capitalize on access to surge more support in the coming months to save more lives and help more Syrians to return home. Third, enable Syrian-led recovery. Translate pledges into concrete investment and expand support for large-scale recovery, reconstruction and development programmes, creating livelihoods, rebuilding homes and restoring essential services.”
14. Wide shot, Security Council
15. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Majd Chourbaji, Civil Society Representative:
“I call on you, the permanent and non-permanent members of this august Council to prevent any attempts to destabilize Syria and undermine its security. So that the efforts of civil society and the international community can take root and bear fruit. The political transition process in my beloved country must be supported. It must be Syrian led and Syrian owned. I also call on the international community through this esteemed Council, to intensify efforts to build national capacities and support quality education, as education is the real bulwark against the resurgence of any future sectarian conflict or violence. Education, education, education, it is the best guarantee for a better future for our children.”
16. Various shots, Security Council
17. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Ibrahim Olabi, Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations:
“We continue our efforts to hold elections in line with the specificity of the interim phase and the post-conflict challenges, in order to fill the legislative gap. And these elections, Mr. President, will be the first of their kind for decades. There will be based on a separation of powers.”
18. Wide shot, Security Council
19. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Ibrahim Olabi, Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations:
“Syria condemns in the strongest terms the Israeli attacks. And once again calls on the Security Council to take immediate action to condemn these attacks and prevent their reoccurrence, and to compel the Israeli occupation authorities to withdraw their forces from the Syrian territory, where they have expanded their operations over the past few months, to end their occupation of the Syrian Golan pursuant to relevant UN resolutions, notably resolutions 242, 383 and 497.”
20. Wide shot, Security Council
Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen reiterated that the establishment of a credible interim legislative body is “an important step” so that urgent areas of reform during the country’s political transition can be addressed.
Briefing the Council today (18 Sep) in New York, the Special Envoy started with a point that the interim authorities in Damascus have inherited not just the ruins of shattered buildings, but the deeper wreckage of a battered social fabric, decayed institutions, and a hollowed-out economy.
Pedersen said, “Syria urgently requires international material assistance on a scale commensurate with its needs and ambition, explain that the private sector’s footprint need to be back in Syria including “through nurturing Syria’s domestic private sector, to ensure that what exists survives and thrives.”
“To achieve this will require more support from the region and the wider international community, and sustained sanctions and export controls relief, reassurance to banks and companies, and an accelerated path of domestic reforms. It also, of course, requires political stability,” the Special Envoy stressed.
Pedersen also noted that regrettably, the spectre of external interference continues to loom large. This month has seen further intervention by Israel, including Syrian state media reporting an incident of Israel killing several Syrian soldiers, and Israeli commandos landing south of Damascus, as well as further strikes in early September
The Special Envoy said, “This kind of external intervention is unacceptable and must stop.”
“We must insist on full respect for Syria’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity, and that any security concerns are addressed based on international law, the 1974 agreement, and diplomatic dialogue,” he added.
On Suweida, Pedersen welcomed the joint efforts of the United States and Jordan with Syria to address the crisis, recently embodied in a comprehensive joint statement on 16 September containing a roadmap with several important and positive elements, including on accountability, humanitarian and commercial access, the restoration of services, reconstruction, detainees, security measures, integration and reconciliation. He noted that a statement from a committee in Suweida aligned with Sheikh Hikmet al-Hijri rejected the statement and spoke of self-determination through “self-administration or secession”.
The Special Envoy reiterated, “It is absolutely vital that solutions are found that both safeguard the sovereignty, unity, independence and territorial integrity of Syria, and address the legitimate and understandable fears among the Druze community about their safety, human rights and political future within Syria, and that the state acts only as a protector and not as a threat. Given the deep distrust and polarization, this situation needs confidence-building measures and continued dialogue and diplomatic support.”
Pedersen also pointed out that Syria is without a legislature, “and while regulatory authority can be exercised via Presidential decree, the establishment of a credible interim legislative body is an important step so that urgent areas of reform during the transition can be addressed.”
For his part, UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher expressed concerns as Syria remains by any metric one of the largest humanitarian emergencies globally.
“More than 70 per cent of the population needs some form of humanitarian aid. More than nine million people are acutely food insecure. Some seven million people are still displaced internally, and more than four million are refugees in neighbouring countries,” Fletcher said.
The top UN humanitarian reiterated his key asks to the Council, “First, preserve stability. Only your consistent sustained engagement to prevent renewed violence can create conditions for recovery. Second, fund the humanitarian response. Help us capitalize on access to surge more support in the coming months to save more lives and help more Syrians to return home. Third, enable Syrian-led recovery. Translate pledges into concrete investment and expand support for large-scale recovery, reconstruction and development programmes, creating livelihoods, rebuilding homes and restoring essential services.”
Civil Society Representative Majd Chourbaji called on the Council to “prevent any attempts to destabilize Syria and undermine its security. So that the efforts of civil society and the international community can take root and bear fruit.”
“The political transition process in my beloved country must be supported. It must be Syrian led and Syrian owned,” Chourbaji stressed.
She also called on the international community to “intensify efforts to build national capacities and support quality education, as education is the real bulwark against the resurgence of any future sectarian conflict or violence.”
“Education, education, education, it is the best guarantee for a better future for our children,” the Civil Society Representative highlighted.
For his part, Syrian Ambassador Ibrahim Olabi reiterated, “We continue our efforts to hold elections in line with the specificity of the interim phase and the post-conflict challenges, in order to fill the legislative gap.”
And these elections, Ambassador Olabi highlighted, will be “the first of their kind for decades. There will be based on a separation of powers.”
Ambassador Olabi also condemned “in the strongest terms” the Israeli attacks on his country.
He once again called on the Security Council to “take immediate action to condemn these attacks and prevent their reoccurrence, and to compel the Israeli occupation authorities to withdraw their forces from the Syrian territory, where they have expanded their operations over the past few months, to end their occupation of the Syrian Golan pursuant to relevant UN resolutions, notably resolutions 242, 383 and 497.”
At the end of the Council meeting, Geir Pedersen, the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria announced that he will be stepping down his post soon after serving it for more than six and a half year.
Download
There is no media available to download.
