The cross-border humanitarian aid mechanism, which allows food and medicine to be sent from Turkey to millions of people in Syria, expired on Monday. The UN Security Council is struggling to find a compromise, and is scheduled to vote on the issue on Tuesday.
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Millions of people in Syrian rebel areas depend on it. But the UN’s cross-border humanitarian aid mechanism expired on Monday, July 10, as the Security Council did not vote to extend it for now. Its 15 members have been trying for days to find a compromise to extend this mechanism, which allows food, water and medicine to be sent from Turkey to the inhabitants of northwestern Syria without authorization from Damascus.
The vote, scheduled first for Friday and then for Monday, was postponed again until Tuesday morning, the British Presidency of the Security Council reported to the AFP news agency on Monday night. Aid convoys do not cross the border at night, so the operations came to an uncertain end on Monday. And with the time difference, even if they voted yes on Tuesday morning in New York, they couldn’t resume on the ground Tuesday morning.
“The key is to find common ground,” British Ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward, who will chair the Council in July, said earlier in the day. “We want to do everything we can for the 4.1 million Syrians who desperately need help,” added the diplomat, who a few days ago denounced the use of humanitarian aid “as a bargaining chip.” This accusation was directed, without naming it, at Russia.
A single border crossing
The mechanism created in 2014 allows the UN to deliver humanitarian aid to the population of the rebel areas of northwest Syria, without the authorization of the Syrian government, which regularly denounces a violation of its sovereignty.
Initially, it provided for four border crossings, but after years of pressure, especially from Moscow, an ally of the Syrian regime, only the crossing remained operational, and its authorization was reduced to six renewable months, which complicated the planning of humanitarian aid.
According to several diplomatic sources, the resolution prepared last week by Switzerland and Brazil sought a one-year extension, as requested by the humanitarian community. But Russia, which had vetoed a one-year extension in July 2022, insisted on just six months, according to the same sources. Switzerland and Brazil have now put a nine-month proposal on the table, a diplomatic source told the AFP news agency.
Last week, the head of UN Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffiths, again called for the opening of as many border crossings as possible, for at least twelve months.
“It is intolerable for the people of the northwest and for the brave souls who come to their aid to go through these ups and downs every six months,” he said, noting that humanitarian agencies were each time forced to store aid in Syria in case it was shut down. the access.
A situation aggravated by the earthquake
According to the UN, four million people in northwestern Syria, mostly women and children, need humanitarian aid to survive after years of conflict, economic crises, epidemics and growing poverty aggravated by devastating earthquakes.
Despite the expiration of the UN mechanism, at least temporarily, two other border crossings are operational, although they are less used than Bab al-Hawa. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad directly authorized its opening after the February earthquakes, but this authorization expired in mid-August. “I am very hopeful that they will continue to be renewed, I can’t think of any reason not to,” Griffiths, who met President Assad in Damascus in late June, said last week.
Since the earthquakes on February 6, more than 3,700 UN aid trucks have passed through the three border crossings, according to the UN. The vast majority have passed through Bab al-Hawa, 79 of them on Monday.
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