United Nations: Over 70% of Syrian Population Requires Assistance, Exceeding 15 Million People

On Tuesday, the United Nations said that nearly 70% of all Syrians, or about 15.3 million people, are in need of humanitarian aid.

The UN’s appeal for $5.4 billion to help more than 14 million people in Syria is less than 10% funded, and the UN World Food Program has warned that without additional funds, 2.5 million people are at risk of missing out on food or cash assistance as of July. .

The dire humanitarian situation, exacerbated by the February earthquake that devastated the opposition-held northwest, was made clear to the Security Council by Ghada Mudawi, Deputy Director of Operations for the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs.

She said the Syrian people are “more and more dependent on humanitarian aid as basic services and vital infrastructure are on the verge of collapse.”

Mudawi urged generous pledges and the swift release of funds at a conference hosted by the European Union in Brussels on June 14-15. “Syrians need the international community’s support now more than at any time in the past 12 years,” she said.

She said the need for continued humanitarian access to the northwest became even more important after the earthquake. She said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had called for an extension of the UN’s mandate for 12 months, which ends in July, saying aid was “indispensable” and “a matter of life or death for millions of people” in the region.

Russia’s UN ambassador Vasily Nebenzya, whose country is a close ally of Syria, said Moscow shared its concerns about the deteriorating humanitarian situation. But he said cross-border aid delivery had “beyond its usefulness” and “we see no reason whatsoever to extend it”.

Nebenzia worried that while cross-border aid was pouring in and funded, the appeal to help the millions of people in dire need in Syria is only 9% funded. It is a “very strange moral imperative,” if aid “applies only to terrorists in Idlib and not to the country as a whole.”

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the US would seek a Security Council resolution to extend aid delivery through the three border crossings currently in operation: Bab al-Hawa, which is the only crossing Russia will allow to remain open in January, as well as Bab al-Hawa. Peace and Wonderful, which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed to open after the earthquake that killed more than 6,000 people in Syria and displaced more than 330,000 people. Assad agreed to keep the two additional crossings open until 13 August.

The US envoy accused Assad of trying to “cry” to “seize the international support pouring in in the aftermath of the earthquakes to restore his place on the world stage,” stressing that “just sitting at the same table with other leaders of the region does nothing to help the people of Syria.”

“If the Assad regime wants to help the Syrian people, it should act immediately and announce that it will keep the Bab al-Salam and al-Rabeeh crossings open until at least August 2024, or as long as it takes,” said Thomas Greenfield. “And even if the Assad regime did the right thing, it frankly is no substitute for the actions of this Council, which has a responsibility to respond to the urgent humanitarian needs of the Syrian people.”

Assad was welcomed back to the Arab League this month after a 12-year suspension. Geir Pedersen, the UN special envoy for Syria, told the Security Council that this meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia along with others in Moscow and Amman that included Syrian officials could create new momentum in long-stalled efforts to end the conflict.

He reiterated that the new diplomatic activity “could act as a circuit breaker in the search for a political solution in Syria – if there is constructive Syrian engagement, and indeed if key regional and international groups and players can work together.”