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The Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria, Geir Pedersen, told the Security Council that “months of potentially significant diplomacy have not translated into concrete outcomes for Syrians on the ground – at home or abroad – or real moves in the political process.” UNIFEED
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STORY: UN / SYRIA
TRT: 06:23
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / RUSSIAN / ARABIC / NATS

DATELINE: 24 JUL 2023, NEW YORK CITY / FILE

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Shotlist

FILE - NEW YORK CITY

1. Wide shot, exterior, flags, UN Headquarters

24 JUL 2023, NEW YORK CITY

2. Wide shot, Security Council
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Geir Pedersen, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria:
“On the political front, let’s be honest: so far, months of potentially significant diplomacy have not translated into concrete outcomes for Syrians on the ground – at home or abroad – or real moves in the political process. I hope they will soon, because if not, it will be another missed opportunity to help the Syrian conflict to come to a negotiated end, at a time when the impact of the crisis is deepening.”
4. Med shot, Security Council
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Geir Pedersen, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria:
“Civilians continue to be arbitrarily detained, tortured and forcibly disappeared. They continue to be injured and killed, amid violent clashes, regular exchanges of mortar, rocket and artillery fire across north-east and north-west Syria. This month also saw airstrikes attributed to Israel, reports of Turkish drone strikes, reports of pro-Government airstrikes north of Aleppo, and the U.S. saying it carried out drone strikes on an ISIL leader near al-Bab.”
6. Med shot, Syria’s Permanent Representative
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Geir Pedersen, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria:
“Meanwhile, Syria’s economic crisis is deepening. Just one example: this month the Syrian pound hit record lows, with the unofficial rate for the first time crossing the 12,000 Syrian pound mark relative to one US dollar. The impact of this on all Syrians, 9 out of 10 of whom are living below the poverty line, is extremely serious.”
8. Close up, Security Council President
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Ramesh Rajasingham, Director of Coordination, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:
“As has been said so many times in this Chamber, cross-border aid is a matter of life and death for millions of people. The future of cross-border assistance should not be a political decision but a humanitarian one. And therefore it was deeply disappointing, as the Secretary-General said, when the Security Council was not able to reach an agreement on extending its authorization of UN cross-border relief operations in Syria.”
10. Wide shot, Security Council
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Ramesh Rajasingham, Director of Coordination, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:
“Record levels of needs give even greater urgency to facilitating humanitarian access through all available routes, both cross-border and crossline, in line with the obligation to facilitate rapid and unimpeded passage of relief under international humanitarian law.”
12. Wide shot, Security Council
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Ramesh Rajasingham, Director of Coordination, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:
“Some 12 million people – more than 50 per cent of the population – are currently food insecure and a further 2.9 million are at risk of sliding into hunger.”
14. Wide shot, Security Council
15. SOUNDBITE (English) Ramesh Rajasingham, Director of Coordination, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:
“Despite these severe vulnerabilities, the 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan for Syria is only 12.4 per cent funded. I am extremely concerned about the consequences of such acute under-funding, which means that we will have to prioritize our response and make difficult choices again this year.”
16. Wide shot, Security Council
17. SOUNDBITE (English) Ramesh Rajasingham, Director of Coordination, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:
“These will likely compromise life-saving assistance and curtail investments in livelihoods and essential services. They will result in more drop-outs from school, more acute food insecurity, and fewer protection interventions. To give you an example of what this means in practice: beneficiaries of food assistance are currently receiving only 50 percent of the standard ration size.”
18. Close up, Security Council President
16. SOUNDBITE (English) Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, United States:
“Let's be clear here. Russia is fully responsible for the lapse in cross border deliveries of humanitarian assistance through Bab al-Hawa. Russia refused to negotiate in good faith. And its veto was yet another reminder that Russia has little or no regard for the needs of vulnerable people. Just today, reports indicate that Russia carried out another round of attacks on Ukraine's grain infrastructure. Russia continues to wage war on the world's food supply.”
17. Med shot, Council members
18. 13. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Dmitry Polyanskiy, First Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation:
“We believe that the return of the Syrian Arab Republic to the Arab family and the restoration of relations with Türkiye facilitates an overall improvement of the atmosphere in the Middle East region, and helps to facilitate an expeditious resolution to the Syrian crisis. In this context, what is clumsy and inappropriate are attempts by Western countries to obstruct these natural processes. We see such unconstructive steps as intervention in sovereign decisions of States and politicization of these purely humanitarian issues, such as early recovery and facilitating a return of refugees.”
19. Med shot, Council members
20. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Bassam Sabbagh, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Syrian Arab Republic:
“The Syrian Arab Republic once again insists that an end be put to the illegal presence of foreign forces on our territory, head of those the Americans, that they stop interfering in the internal affairs of Syria, their support for terrorist groups, and that the pillaging of natural resources of Syria, particularly oil, stop. We also call for the complete, immediate and unconditional lifting of unilateral coercive measures imposed on the Syrian people, which constitute a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter and resolutions of the Security Council.”
21. Wide shot, Security Council

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Storyline

The Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria, Geir Pedersen, told the Security Council that “months of potentially significant diplomacy have not translated into concrete outcomes for Syrians on the ground – at home or abroad – or real moves in the political process.”

Briefing the Council on Monday (24 July), Pedersen added, “I hope they will soon, because if not, it will be another missed opportunity to help the Syrian conflict to come to a negotiated end, at a time when the impact of the crisis is deepening.”

The Special Envoy noted that “civilians continue to be arbitrarily detained, tortured and forcibly disappeared” and that “they continue to be injured and killed, amid violent clashes, regular exchanges of mortar, rocket and artillery fire across north-east and north-west Syria. “

Pedersen also said that, this month, “also saw airstrikes attributed to Israel, reports of Turkish drone strikes, reports of pro-Government airstrikes north of Aleppo, and the U.S. saying it carried out drone strikes on an ISIL leader near al-Bab.”

Meanwhile, the Special Envoy said, “Syria’s economic crisis is deepening.”

“Just one example: this month the Syrian pound hit record lows, with the unofficial rate for the first time crossing the 12,000 Syrian pound mark relative to one US dollar. The impact of this on all Syrians, 9 out of 10 of whom are living below the poverty line, is extremely serious,” added Pedersen.

The Director of Coordination of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Ramesh Rajasingham, also briefed the Council, highlighting the failure of the Member States to pass a resolution regarding humanitarian aid delivery.

Rajasingham said, “As has been said so many times in this Chamber, cross-border aid is a matter of life and death for millions of people. The future of cross-border assistance should not be a political decision but a humanitarian one. And therefore it was deeply disappointing, as the Secretary-General said, when the Security Council was not able to reach an agreement on extending its authorization of UN cross-border relief operations in Syria.”
According to him, “record levels of needs give even greater urgency to facilitating humanitarian access through all available routes, both cross-border and crossline, in line with the obligation to facilitate rapid and unimpeded passage of relief under international humanitarian law.”

Rajasingham also told Council members that “some 12 million people – more than 50 per cent of the population – are currently food insecure and a further 2.9 million are at risk of sliding into hunger.”

Despite these severe vulnerabilities, the humanitarian official informed that the 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan for Syria is only 12.4 per cent funded.

“I am extremely concerned about the consequences of such acute under-funding, which means that we will have to prioritize our response and make difficult choices again this year,” said Rajasingham.

According to him, “these will likely compromise life-saving assistance and curtail investments in livelihoods and essential services”, resulting in “more drop-outs from school, more acute food insecurity, and fewer protection interventions.”

The OCHA official added, “To give you an example of what this means in practice: beneficiaries of food assistance are currently receiving only 50 percent of the standard ration size.”

The Permanent Representative of the United States, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said “Let's be clear here. Russia is fully responsible for the lapse in cross border deliveries of humanitarian assistance through Bab al-Hawa. Russia refused to negotiate in good faith.”

Thomas-Greenfield said the veto “was yet another reminder that Russia has little or no regard for the needs of vulnerable people” and noted that “just today, reports indicate that Russia carried out another round of attacks on Ukraine's grain infrastructure. Russia continues to wage war on the world's food supply.”

The First Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Polyanskiy, said, “We believe that the return of the Syrian Arab Republic to the Arab family and the restoration of relations with Türkiye facilitates an overall improvement of the atmosphere in the Middle East region, and helps to facilitate an expeditious resolution to the Syrian crisis.”

In this context, Polyanskiy continued, “what is clumsy and inappropriate are attempts by Western countries to obstruct these natural processes.”

“We see such unconstructive steps as intervention in sovereign decisions of States and politicization of these purely humanitarian issues, such as early recovery and facilitating a return of refugees,” he added.

Bassam Sabbagh, the Permanent Representative of Syria, said that his country “once again insists that an end be put to the illegal presence of foreign forces on our territory, head of those the Americans, that they stop interfering in the internal affairs of Syria, their support for terrorist groups, and that the pillaging of natural resources of Syria, particularly oil, stop.”

“We also call for the complete, immediate and unconditional lifting of unilateral coercive measures imposed on the Syrian people, which constitute a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter and resolutions of the Security Council,” Sabbagh concluded.

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