Idlib humanitarian situation ‘alarming’
More than 80,000 newly displaced people have arrived in the area since March
The UN humanitarian chief on Tuesday urged the Syrian government primarily but also some rebel groups to allow the delivery of aid to more than 2 million desperate people in hard-to-reach areas.
Mark Lowcock told the UN Security Council that the situation in Idlib, one of the opposition’s last remaining footholds in Syria, is “alarming” with air strikes, clashes between armed groups, overcrowding and severely stretched basic services.
Idlib has suffered deteriorating security in recent months as rebel factions battle with the Al Qaida-linked Levant Liberation Committee for dominance and Lowcock said more than 80,000 newly displaced people have arrived in the area since March.
Lowcock said the first convoy in more than two months was due to proceed to the northern rural belt of Homs yesterday with assistance for nearly 93,000 people.
France’s UN ambassador Francois Delattre called the humanitarian situation throughout Syria “alarming,” saying access for UN agencies and aid organisations to deliver humanitarian assistance “is still very much constrained.”
In Idlib, he said, there are more than two million people including hundreds of thousands of Syrians evacuated from cities taken back by the government, many who lack “everything” living in over-saturated camps.
In the Damascus suburbs of eastern Ghouta, Lowcock said the government asked the UN to provide assistance after it retook the former rebel-held area and he had released $16 million.
But he said the UN has only received authorisation to visit once since mid-March.
The humanitarian chief reiterated the UN’s request to facilitate access, saying the government has approved a convoy to aid 70,000 people in the eastern Ghouta town of Douma, but “facilitation letters have not been provided.”
Lowcock, the undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said the 2 million Syrians in hard-to-reach areas “in places like northern rural Homs, Douma and southern Damascus are some of the most desperate in the country”. So far this year, he said, only six convoys have reached those area helping 169,000 people, “less than 20 per cent of the people we would like to be reaching”.
Lowcock urged the Security Council to support his office’s efforts to ensure “safe, unimpeded and sustained access” to those Syrians in greatest need.