Fears remain despite UN’s Syria aid access vote

Russia and China also back resolution

It is highly unlikely that the move will free humanitarian relief from the divided politics or insulate it from corruption and inefficiency

BEIRUT // Aid workers in Syria have long struggled to overcome obstacles preventing them from providing sufficient humanitarian assistance in the war-torn country.

UN Security Council resolution 2139, passed unanimously on Saturday, is an acknowledgement that the blockade of aid routes cannot be allowed to continue.

The resolution, backed even by Russia and China, which vetoed three previous resolutions, requires “all parties, in particular the Syrian government” to allow quick, safe and unhindered access for the UN and other aid agencies.

Yet, it makes little provision for how that demand for access will translate into reality on the ground.

The UN resolution includes a requirement for cross-border access, a potentially crucial new development that aid organisations have insisted is vital if they are to do their jobs properly.

Until now, all UN financed and administered aid inside Syria has been coordinated with officials in Damascus – something the most recent UN aid plan makes clear – giving Syrian president Bashar Al Assad’s government massive influence over humanitarian relief; where, when and how much aid gets sent to any given area.

Even UN aid flown from Iraq to the edge of north- eastern Syria lands on a regime- held airport and is distributed from there.

Rather than taking the shortest routes to hard-hit zones – perhaps entering from neighbouring Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon or Iraq via rebel held frontier posts – UN aid has instead been forced to make long diversions and to cross multiple frontlines, delaying, and in some cases blocking, the flow.

With the resolution, that may now change, but it is unlikely to free humanitarian relief from the savagely divided politics of Syria or release it from the machinery of a government renowned for inef- ficiency and corruption. “We have been in the unhappy position of having to treat the Syrian authorities as a facilitator for aid when, in fact as we all know but do not say, they are a major obstacle to aid efforts,” said an aid worker.

This regime’s veto over aid is a key factor when it comes to sieges of different neighbourhoods, some of which, like Yarmouk and Moadamiya, have resulted in people starving to death within walking distance of the UN’s offices in Damascus, all because requests by aid groups to take in food have been denied by Syrian officials.

Aid convoys from the Syrian capital to the war- ravaged east have also been blocked repeatedly since late last year, according to aid workers.

Permission for access was negotiated with rebel factions and the aid workers also had permission from the authorities in Damascus.

However, en route regime security units refused to honour the paperwork, cutting off main roads and blocking convoys.

“We’ve been denied access to places even when we’ve had all the right papers from the government – a security officer once tore up the permissions we had and told our team, ‘even if you had written permission from God, I wouldn’t let you pass’,” the aid worker said.

How a UN resolution will change this is hard to see, even if the Syrian regime, under pressure from its allies in Moscow and Beijing, promises to do as the UN wants.

“The notion of there being a government in Syria is really something of a fiction, the country is run by the security services and they control what we can and cannot do,” the aid worker said.

At least three foreign aid workers remain missing, after being kidnapped in northern Syria, and rebel units have shot at and seized aid shipments when supplies are transported through their territory.