UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon demanded on Wednesday that the UN Security Council take action in Syria on alleged violations of international law as he reported to the body that none of the warring parties was adhering to UN demands for aid access.
In his second monthly report to the 15-member council on the implementation of a resolution demanding humanitarian aid access in Syria, Ban said “none of the parties to the conflict have adhered to the demands of the council.”
“The Security Council must take action to deal with these flagrant violations of the basic principles of international law,” he wrote in the 21-page report.
He did not specify what measures the council should take.
Two months after the council achieved rare unity to unanimously approve a resolution demanding rapid, safe and unhindered aid access, including across borders, Ban said that the situation “remains an extremely challenging environment in which to work.”
In that resolution, the council expressed “its intent to take further steps in the case of noncompliance” with the resolution.
However, diplomats said Russia was unlikely to agree to any action, such as sanctions, if Syria’s government was found to be at fault.
Ban issued a similar report last month.
Earlier on Wednesday, UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos told reporters in Geneva that hopes for a political deal to end Syria’s civil war were fading and it was getting harder every day to send aid to millions of trapped and displaced civilians.
Last month, the US and European delegations said that Ban’s reporting had shown Syria’s government was largely responsible for the lack of aid access, which it denies.
The Western powers said that any problems caused by rebel groups were the work of Islamist fighters.
The situation is getting worse, Ban said.
“Thousands of people are not getting the medical care, including life-saving medicines, that they need,” he reported.
“Medical supplies, including life-saving medicines and vaccines, and equipment for the wounded and the sick are commodities privileged throughout the Geneva Conventions,” he said.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
SECRETIVE SECT: Tetsuya Yamagami was said to have held a grudge against the Unification Church for bankrupting his family after his mother donated about ￥100m The gunman accused of killing former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe yesterday pleaded guilty, three years after the assassination in broad daylight shocked the world. The slaying forced a reckoning in a nation with little experience of gun violence, and ignited scrutiny of alleged ties between prominent conservative lawmakers and a secretive sect, the Unification Church. “Everything is true,” Tetsuya Yamagami said at a court in the western city of Nara, admitting to murdering the nation’s longest-serving leader in July 2022. The 45-year-old was led into the room by four security officials. When the judge asked him to state his name, Yamagami, who
RSS