UN aid chief accuses Syria of blocking help to neediest
The U.N. humanitarian chief accused the Syrian government on Thursday of blocking aid to hundreds of thousands of the country’s neediest people despite a nationwide cease-fire that has given “a glimmer of hope” that the conflict might be coming to an end.
Undersecretary-General Stephen O’Brien told the Security Council that a two-step approval process that the government agreed to for humanitarian convoys to cross conflict lines to get to besieged and hard to reach areas “has become, in practice, a 10-step process.”
Despite the Dec. 30 cease-fire and a humanitarian task force whose sole purpose is to ensure access, he said, “we continue to be blocked at every turn, by lack of approvals at central and local levels, disagreements on access routes, and violation of agreed procedures at checkpoints by parties to the conflict.”
O’Brien said the result is that only one convoy delivered aid to 6,000 people in December, when the U.N. asked for approval to help 930,250 people — and he criticized the removal of over 23,000 medical items from the trucks that did get through. So far in January, he said, the situation isn’t much better with just a single convoy reaching 40,000 people.