Syria agrees to extend aid delivery through Türkiye for 6 months

Damascus (Al-Ittihad)

The Syrian government extended approval to deliver humanitarian aid to areas controlled by opposition groups in the northwest of the country, through a border crossing with Turkey, for another six months.
The United Nations has been using the Bab al-Hawa border crossing between Syria and Turkey to deliver aid to millions of people in northwestern Syria since 2014 with a mandate from the UN Security Council.
The entry of aid through Bab al-Hawa stopped in the middle of last year, after a 15-member committee failed to extend the agreement, before the Syrian government later allowed the United Nations to continue using the crossing for another six months.
In a diplomatic note dated yesterday, the Syrian mission to the United Nations said that Damascus “will extend the permit granted to the United Nations to use the Bab al-Hawa crossing to deliver humanitarian aid to northwestern Syria for an additional six months, until July 13, 2024.”
Damascus also allowed the United Nations to send aid through two other border crossings between Syria and Turkey after an earthquake killed more than 50,000 people in the two countries last year.
The term of this authorization is scheduled to expire on February 13th.
Turkey is seeking to renew the two mandates, after levels of interest and funding priorities affected the volume of aid.
Millions of people in northwestern Syria depend on aid arriving through Turkey to secure food, medicine, and other basic needs. After nearly 13 years of conflict, many across the country are suffering from the worst economic conditions, as nine out of ten Syrians live below the poverty line.
According to the spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Eri Kaneko, the cross-border mechanism remains a lifeline for the displaced in northwestern Syria, who number more than 2.5 million people.
He stated that 5,000 aid trucks crossed into the region in 2023, of which 4,000 entered through Bab al-Hawa.
The spokesman for the United Nations Secretary-General, Stephane Dujarric, said that about 170 humanitarian aid missions had been completed to northwestern Syria via Turkey from the February 6 earthquakes until last August, noting the provision of technical materials to the children’s hospital and various health facilities in northern Syria, and pointing out the presence of Plans to bring new aid into Syria through the Bab al-Salam crossing in the coming days.
Dujarric stated that employees of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs visited projects to support shelter and education, funded by the Humanitarian Fund, in the city of Al-Bab, about 40 kilometers northeast of Aleppo, across the Turkish-Syrian border.
He confirmed the continuation of the humanitarian response in northwestern Syria, where UN agencies had previously stored, that is, before the expiration of the cross-border aid permit through the “Bab al-Hawa” crossing on July 10, humanitarian aid supplies, which were being sent and distributed.
The Turkish mission to the United Nations stated that it is working to remind donor countries that stopping aid may have serious consequences on the ground for the region, and even for Europe, and it also urges the international community to reconsider decisions to stop funding projects in northwestern Syria.