UN chief pleads for resolution to Syria aid delivery

United Nations humanitarian chief Valerie Amos blamed the Syrian government and opposition for failing to protect civilians and said a Security Council resolution would help if it ensured the delivery of aid to millions trapped by the fighting.

UN chief pleads for resolution to Syria aid delivery

United Nations humanitarian chief Valerie Amos blamed the Syrian government and opposition for failing to protect civilians and said a Security Council resolution would help if it ensured the delivery of aid to millions trapped by the fighting.

Baroness Amos said after briefing the council that she asked members “to do everything they can to use their influence” on both sides to ensure humanitarian pauses and ceasefires, regular access for aid workers and written commitments to uphold international law.

“It is unacceptable that international humanitarian law continues to be consistently and flagrantly violated by all parties to the conflict,” she said. “All parties are failing in their responsibility to protect civilians. We understand that a war is going on, but even wars have rules.”

The Security Council has started to grapple with rival resolutions on the worsening humanitarian crisis: a Western and Arab-backed proposal that threatens sanctions if its demand for unrestricted humanitarian access isn’t met in 15 days and a Russian text that makes no mention of sanctions.

Russia and China, which support the Syrian government, have blocked three previous Western-backed resolutions that would have pressured President Bashar Assad to end the now three-year-old civil war.

The divided Security Council came together in October to approve a presidential statement appealing for immediate access to all areas of Syria to deliver aid. But it has never adopted a legally binding humanitarian resolution.

The presidential statement has not delivered the results that are critically needed, and progress on the humanitarian front in the last four months has been “limited, uneven and painfully slow”, Baroness Amos said.

Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin said discussions on combining the two resolutions had started and “I hope this time it’s going to be a success”.

“I wouldn’t say that we are too far apart because one thing that unites us is the realisation that humanitarian situation in Syria is very grave and that additional efforts need to be undertaken in order to improve it,” he said.

If Russia maintains its opposition to any mention of sanctions, the key issue in negotiations will be how to give a resolution the teeth that Western and Arab nations want.

US ambassador Samantha Power said a resolution must use levers and pressure to maximise “the likelihood of meaningful consequences on the ground”.

“For us, given the gravity of the situation on the ground, better no resolution than a bad resolution,” she said.

Neither Baroness Amos nor Ms Power would use the word “sanctions” but both said they did not want a resolution that just incorporated what was in the presidential statement and did not lead to change on the ground.

Baroness Amos said the conflict had intensified since the presidential statement’s adoption. “The social fabric of Syria has been torn to shreds,” she said.

She said there was a verbal agreement to extend the rare ceasefire that went into effect last Friday in a besieged, rebel-held area of Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, but it must be put in writing.

She also stressed that Homs “cannot serve as a model” for humanitarian access.

While 1,400 people have been evacuated, nearly 250,000 remain in besieged communities, Baroness Amos said, and while humanitarian workers provided food and medicine to 2,500 people, more than three million people in hard-to-reach areas were not getting aid.

Baroness Amos, who first raised the plight in Homs 14 months ago, stressed: “We cannot wait another 14 months to reach 1,400 more people. ... There are millions of people in dire need across Syria.”

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