Syria: The United Nations has described conditions placed by the Syrian government on aid deliveries from Turkey to northwest Syria as “unacceptable.”
The UN Security Council was unable to agree on either of the two competing proposals to extend the mandate for bringing aid from Turkey by way of the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, as per the statement.
Syria has made life-saving support conditional on “full cooperation and coordination with the government” and on the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent running aid operations. In a letter sent to the UN Security Council on 14th July 2023, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated the Syrian proposal called two of those conditions “unacceptable” for carrying out “principled humanitarian operations,” as per the reports.
The OCHA has observed that requiring that aid deliveries be supervised by the Red Cross or Red Crescent is “neither consistent with the independence of the United Nations nor practical” since those organisations “are not present in northwest Syria.”
OCHA said that the United Nations can lawfully carry out cross-border humanitarian operations through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing for the specified duration if they obtain permission from the Syrian Government.
The UN has not used the Bab al-Hawa crossing since the Security Council authorization expired, according to the statement. Council authorization was required due to the lack of prior agreement from the Syrian government regarding the UN operation, which has been providing aid to millions of people in northwest Syria since 2014.
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