The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Tuesday failed to renew a vital aid delivery program for Syria, which has pushed the country’s estimated four million people into a more dire situation. as the country’s civil war continued into its second decade.
The original UN agreement – first brokered in 2014 – allowed aid to be sent overland from Turkey to rebel-held areas in Syria’s northwestern Idlib Province via the Bab al -Hawa, ends on Monday after its last extension.
Permanent members of the UNSC USA, UK and France called for a full one-year extension but supported a compromise made by Switzerland and Brazil in the face of Russian opposition to the Western plan. In the end, 13 of the 15 members of the Council voted in favor of the extension.
However, permanent member Russia vetoed the nine-month plan, killing it. Moscow only got support from its trusted ally China, another permanent member of the Security Council, for a six-month extension.
After the vote, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield called Russia’s veto, “an act of absolute cruelty.”
Russia accused the West of challenging the veto.
Moscow has been trying to destroy the agreement for years now, arguing that it “ignores” the will of the Syrian people. Moscow’s protectorate in Damascus, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has railed against the delivery of aid as a violation of sovereignty because Damascus has never agreed to them.
This means that only the entire UNSC can re-authorize an extension. Until then, its fate remains unclear.
Only one of the four original UN crossings was still in operation on Monday – even though 80% of all goods, from diapers to chickpeas, are delivered across it.
Observers have long called for annual extensions but Moscow has always fought such moves, instead insisting on six-month extensions.
Russia’s veto ‘cynical,’ UNSC ‘will not commit’ to humanitarian aid
Outside humanitarian and rights groups were outraged. Human Rights Watch (HRW) UN Advocacy Officer Floriane Borel criticized the inefficiency of the UNSC, saying, “Russia’s cynical veto of a cross-border aid lifeline for millions of Syrians is a painful reminding that the Security Council should not be entrusted with decisions about. humanitarian aid.”
“The delivery of aid should be based on needs, not on politics,” Borel said.
Martin Griffiths, who heads humanitarian affairs at the UN, called the situation, “unbearable for the people of the northwest, and those brave souls who help them go through it every six months.”
He also emphasized the highly complex logistical steps required by the vote.
Griffiths, too, called for the opening of multiple crossings for at least a year at a time.
Although Syrian President Assad has agreed to open two more aid crossings into the country after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake killed thousands of people and devastated large parts of Turkey and Syria on February 8, most of the 3,700 trucks that entered the country. since then it still came by crossing the Bab al-Hawa.
Now, the other two are the only ones that remain open, and they are scheduled to close in more than a month’s time.
js/lo (AFP, AP, Reuters)
