Friday 27 June 2014 Britain will continue to press for tougher United Nations authority to bypass obstructions to getting humanitarian aid to victims of Syrias civil war, William Hague, the foreign secretary, has said, after the official estimate of the number in need neared 11 million. The UNs humanitarian chief, Lady Amos, said Bashar al-Assads regime was more concerned with controlling the work of aid agencies than getting emergency supplies to victims of the fighting. Damascus has warned that any attempt to authorise aid being sent directly into rebel-held areas from neighbouring countries –a move under discussion as part of efforts to agree a new security council resolution - would justify retaliation. A resolution passed four months ago has proved inadequate, with Amos revealing in her latest update that an additional 1.2 million had been added to those in need in that period, taking the total to 10.8 million. Of those, 4.7 million are in hard-to-reach areas and 241,000 are living under siege conditions. But bureaucratic hurdles imposed by the government have contributed to only half the planned UN food assistance being dispatched in June, and only around one in 100 of the 241,000 people living under siege conditions getting food. Opposition groups have attacked, threatened and refused to cooperate with aid workers, she noted. I cannot describe to the council the frustration felt by experienced aid workers who have to spend endless hours trying to get agreement for aid deliveries as peoples lives hang in the balance. The focus of the government of Syria remains on controlling the work of the UN and its partners. Our focus remains on the people who so desperately need our help. Hague said: Four months after UN security council resolution 2139 was unanimously passed to address the desperate humanitarian situation in Syria, Assads regime continues to block aid from getting to millions who urgently need it, to use siege and starvation tactics against civilian communities, and to carry out indiscriminate air attacks and barrel bombing of populated neighbourhoods. The regimes failure to comply with UN security council demands has led to the rapid deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Syria with half of Syrias population now in need of humanitarian assistance. 4.7 million people are now being deliberately denied access to urgent food, water and medical supplies. The UN secretary general has asked for the scurity councils help in ensuring aid reaches all those who need it across the whole of Syria. We must heed this call. That is why the UK is pressing for the adoption of a new and tougher UN security council resolution which would give the UNs humanitarian agencies the authority they have been asking for to deliver aid into Syria. theguardian/world/2014/jun/27/syria-aid-united-nations-william-hague
Posted on: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 23:32:41 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015