A UN Security Council resolution that leaves only one of two border crossings open for aid deliveries from Turkey into rebel-held northwestern Syria will cost lives and intensify the suffering of 1.3 million people living there, aid agencies said.
Western states had pressed for aid access to continue through two crossings at the Turkish border, but Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s main ally in his war, and China vetoed a last-ditch effort on Friday, the day the that the crossing points’ mandate expired.
“In northwest Syria, where a vital cross-border lifeline has been closed ... it will be harder to reach an estimated 1.3 million people dependent on food and medicine delivered by the UN cross-border,” aid agencies operating in Syria said in a joint statement. “Many will now not receive the help they need. Lives will be lost. Suffering will intensify.”
Photo: AFP
“With the first case of COVID-19 confirmed in Idlib, an area with a severely weakened health infrastructure, this is a devastating blow,” the statement added.
In a separate statement, Physicians for Human Rights said the resolution had shut down “direct routes to hundreds of thousands of displaced Syrians in dire need of food and medicine.”
Russia and China have argued that the northwest can be reached from within Syria, meaning via government-held territory, and that aid deliveries from Turkey violate Syria’s sovereignty.
The council vote approving a single crossing from Turkey was 12-0, with Russia, China and the Dominican Republic abstaining.
The vote capped a week of high-stakes rivalry pitting Russia and China against the 13 other council members. An overwhelming majority voted twice to maintain the two crossings from Turkey, but Russia and China vetoed both resolutions — the 15th and 16th veto by Russia of a Syria resolution since the conflict began in 2011 and the ninth and 10th by China.
Germany and Belgium, which had sponsored the widely supported resolutions for two crossing points, finally had to back down to the threat of another Russian veto.
The resolution they put forward on Saturday authorized only a single crossing point from Turkey for a year.
Before adopting the resolution on Saturday, the council rejected two amendments proposed by Russia, including one suggesting that US and EU sanctions on Syria were impeding humanitarian aid.
That contention was vehemently rejected by US President Donald Trump’s administration and the EU, which said their sanctions include exemptions for humanitarian deliveries.
The council also rejected an amendment from China.
“This issue should not be politicized,” Russian Deputy Ambassador to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy said after the vote.
He said Russia abstained in the vote because negotiations over the resolution were marred by “clumsiness, disrespect.”
Polyansky accused Western nations on the council of “unprecedented heights” of hypocrisy, saying they were ready to jeopardize cross-border aid over the references to unilateral sanctions.
German Ambassador to the UN Christoph Heusgen responded that while Russia talks about delivery of aid across conflict lines, “in practice it doesn’t” happen.
Human Rights Watch UN director Louis Charbonneau said: “Council members buckled and gave Moscow what it wanted — a further drastic reduction of cross-border aid to desperate Syrians who rely on it for survival.”
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