GENEVA / IDLIB UPDATE
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STORY: GENEVA / IDLIB UPDATE
TRT: 3:21
SOURCE: UNTV CH
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH /NATS
DATELINE: 18 FEBRUARY 2020, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1. Wide shot, exterior, flag alley, Palais des Nations,
2. Wide shot, Press briefing room.
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Rupert Colville, spokesperson, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR):
“As the High Commissioner puts it, ‘No shelter is now safe.’ And as the Government offensive continues and people are forced into smaller and smaller pockets, she fears even more people will be killed.”
4. Close up, journalist
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Rupert Colville, spokesperson, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR):
“In all, since 1 January this year, during the Syrian Government’s latest major military offensive to retake key areas in Idlib and Aleppo, we have recorded the deaths of 299 civilians in this region of Syria. Around 93 per cent of those deaths were caused by the Syrian Government and its allies.”
6. Close up, camera operator, journalists in background.
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Rupert Colville, spokesperson, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR):
“The sheer quantity of attacks on these hospitals, medical facilities, schools, would suggest they can’t all be accidental, and at a minimum, even if they were accidental, it shows lack of proportionality, necessity, precaution and so on, all of which can contribute to something being attributed as a war crime.”
8. Wide shot, journalists.
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Marixie Mercado, Spokesperson, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF):
“Over half a million children – 525,000 and climbing, have been forcibly displaced in north-west Syria since 1 December. At least 77 children were killed or injured in January alone. The breakdown is 28 children killed, and 49 children injured.”
10. Close up, journalist typing.
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Marixie Mercado, Spokesperson, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF):
“There are about four million people living in the north-west and just over two million of them are children. Virtually every child, up to 1.8 million of them, require humanitarian assistance.”
12. Wide shot, podium
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Marixie Mercado, Spokesperson, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF):
“We ask for an immediate cessation of hostilities and an end to the war in Syria for once and for all, and we ask for all humanitarian workers to be able to respond to the massive needs in compliance with international humanitarian law.”
14. Close up, journalist.
15. SOUNDBITE (English) Tarik Jasarevic, spokesperson, World Health Organization (WHO):
“The name of the hospital is Kinana General Hospital in the Daret Azza locality. This hospital has been serving about 50,000 people and has been carrying out about 10,000 patient consultations per month. The second facility is Al-Ferdous maternity and childcare hospital. It suffered minor damage, but it is not clear at this moment if the hospital can continue operating.”
16. Close up, journalist writing.
17. SOUNDBITE (English) Tarik Jasarevic, spokesperson, World Health Organization (WHO):
“As of today, 74 health facilities have suspended services in Idlib and Aleppo since 1 December last year directly decreasing civilian access to healthcare. Out of nearly 550 health facilities in Syria’s north-west, roughly half are operational.”
18. Med shot, journalists.
19. SOUNDBITE (English) Tarik Jasarevic, spokesperson, World Health Organization (WHO):
“Luckily there were no casualties in yesterday’s attacks, but they do bring the total number of attacks on health in Syria this year to six, resulting in 10 deaths and 30 injuries, on top of restricting or denying civilian access to health. All of these six attacks have occurred in the north-west.”
20. Close up, journalist
21. Wide shot, journalists, podium
22. Close up: journalists typing
Facing freezing temperatures and bombing, more than 900,000 civilians in Syria’s north-west have been forced into ever smaller areas in search of shelter, the United Nations said on Tuesday (18 Feb).
“As the High Commissioner puts it, ‘No shelter is now safe’,” Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, said. “And as the Government offensive continues and people are forced into smaller and smaller pockets, she fears even more people will be killed.”
Speaking to journalists in Geneva, Colville spoke of the High Commissioner’s “horror” at the scale of the humanitarian crisis in north-west Syria.
“In all, since 1 January this year, during the Syrian Government’s latest major military offensive to retake key areas in Idlib and Aleppo, we have recorded the deaths of 299 civilians in this region of Syria. Around 93 per cent of those deaths were caused by the Syrian Government and its allies,” Colville said, with the remaining seven per cent of fatalities attributable to non-State armed groups.
More than 80 per cent of the deaths attributable to Government forces and their allies – 246 out of 299 – came after airstrikes, the spokesperson added. Asked whether the attacks on civilians and medical facilities contravened international norms, Colville highlighted their “sheer quantity” in the near nine-year conflict.
Other UN-appointed institutions had greater means to investigate these attacks and ensure justice for victims, he noted, such as the Commission of Inquiry on Syria - which was set up by and reports regularly to the Human Rights Council - and the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism, established by the UN General Assembly in December 2016.
“The sheer quantity of attacks on these hospitals, medical facilities, schools, would suggest they can’t all be accidental,” Colville said. “At a minimum, even if they were accidental, it shows lack of proportionality, necessity, precaution and so on, all of which can contribute to something being attributed as a war crime.”
Amid the Syrian Government’s offensive in north-west Syria - the last bastion of opposition non-state armed groups – UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned that of the four million people living in the north-west, just over two million are children.
“Virtually every child, up to 1.8 million of them, require humanitarian assistance,” spokesperson Marixie Mercado said.
She added that of the more than 900,000 people forced to flee the escalating violence, “over half a million children – 525,000 and climbing - have been forcibly displaced in north-west Syria since 1 December. At least 77 children were killed or injured in January alone. The breakdown is 28 children killed, and 49 children injured.”
In line with UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore’s assessment that the situation in north-west Syria has become “untenable”, Mercado reiterated the agency’s call for an end to the violence.
“We ask for an immediate cessation of hostilities and an end to the war in Syria for once and for all, and we ask for all humanitarian workers to be able to respond to the massive needs in compliance with international humanitarian law,” she said.
In addition to grave concerns about civilians, the World Health Organization (WHO) expressed alarm about two attacks on hospitals on Monday.
“The name of the hospital is Kinana General Hospital in the Daret Azza locality,” WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said. “This hospital has been serving about 50,000 people and has been carrying out about 10,000 patient consultations per month. The second facility is Al-Fardous maternity and childcare hospital. It suffered minor damage, but it is not clear at this moment if the hospital can continue operating.”
He added: “Luckily there were no casualties in yesterday’s attacks, but they do bring the total number of attacks on health in Syria this year to six, resulting in 10 deaths and 30 injuries, on top of restricting or denying civilian access to health. All of these six attacks have occurred in the north-west.”
As of 18 February, 74 health facilities have suspended services in Idleb and Aleppo since 1 December 2019, according to WHO. Out of nearly 550 health facilities in Syria‘s northwest, roughly half are operational.