What's In Blue

Posted Wed 28 May 2014

OCHA Briefing on Humanitarian Access in Syria

Tomorrow morning (29 May), Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Kyung-wha Kang will brief Council members in consultations on the third report since the adoption of resolution 2139 on humanitarian access in Syria (S/2014/365).

Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos last briefed Council members on 30 April when she reported that the violence was intensifying and that diplomatic pressure on the parties to comply with resolution 2139 had yielded very little result. She stated that with no political solution in sight, the UN needed more cross-line access and provided several examples of where the Council had authorised humanitarian access in the past, such as Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia and Sudan. She said the state’s responsibility to protect is being violated every day and the onus is on the Security Council to act. In tomorrow’s briefing Kang is likely to strongly reiterate the need for the Council to take action in the face of a devastating humanitarian situation. The death toll is conservatively estimated at 162,000 and according to the UN refugee agency there are 2.8 million refugees. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated earlier in the year that there were 6.5 million internally displaced persons and 9.3 million in need of humanitarian assistance, with almost 241,000 living in besieged areas and that there are a further 3.5 million in areas rarely accessed by humanitarian workers.

Council members expect tomorrow’s briefing to expand upon the main elements of the most recent report, which did not indicate any progress on implementation of resolution 2139’s key demands, such as authorising cross-border aid operations, allowing access to besieged or hard-to-reach areas, observing medical neutrality, ceasing aerial bombardments or easing administrative hurdles. In fact, access has dropped significantly since the last reporting period due to a new transport mechanism put in place by the government. The report says that the government is failing its responsibility to look after its own people and that its arbitrary denial of aid, in particular by not opening relevant border crossings, is a violation of resolution 2139 and international law. The report calls on the Security Council to urgently consider next steps to ensure compliance with its demands.

Cross-border access is a key demand of resolution 2139 that remains largely unmet, as only one of eight identified priority crossings has been approved by Syria. Council members may be interested in clarification from OCHA regarding media reports that the overwhelming majority of the UN’s aid entering the country remains in government-controlled areas. In response to this phenomenon, the 15 May communiqué of the Core Group of Friends of Syria—including Council members France, Jordan, the UK and the US—announced that in their national capacities they would move towards delivering half of their aid across the borders of Syria’s neighbouring countries, i.e. not through the UN.

There is extreme frustration among Council members and the broader international community that resolution 2139 has not led to an appreciably improved humanitarian situation. Tomorrow’s briefing will likely cement the view of many Council members that further action on humanitarian access in Syria is necessary, since resolution 2139 expressed the intent to take further steps in the case of non-compliance. In the latest report, OCHA has said that it will update the numbers of those affected by the crisis in mid-year and some members may be interested in getting a sense of what to expect.

Anticipating such a shift in the Council, Russia circulated a draft humanitarian resolution on 13 May that supported localised ceasefires, like that reached in Homs on 2 May, as a way towards less violence and an eventual political settlement. Council members met informally at expert level only once, on 16 May, to discuss the text. A significant majority expressed a strong preference for Australia, Jordan and Luxembourg to remain the penholders on the issue. Many added that the Council could not support a text that described Homs as a positive example of government-opposition engagement when the ceasefire had only been reached after two years of government bombardment and siege tactics to starve the area into submission.

There is increasing momentum to table a draft resolution quite soon to create legal obligations on the regime to allow aid across borders and conflict lines. There is also an interest in tightly focusing on such access in order to avoid reopening and eventually undermining the gains of resolution 2139 in what many expect to be difficult negotiations. Despite China and Russia vetoing a resolution referring the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court on 22 May, humanitarian leads Australia, Jordan and Luxembourg and the P3 are hoping for a consensus text on humanitarian access. However, the degree of flexibility in negotiations may be limited, given that the precise aim of the resolution will test China and Russia’s staunch adherence to the principle of sovereignty.

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