Foreign Secretary calls for UN action on Syrian humanitarian crisis
Foreign Secretary calls for further UN Security Council action to ensure aid gets to the millions who need it in Syria.
Speaking as the UN presents its monthly report on humanitarian access in Syria, Foreign Secretary William Hague said:
Four months after UN Security Council resolution 2139 was unanimously passed to address the desperate humanitarian situation in Syria, Assad’s regime continues to block aid from getting to millions who urgently need it, to use siege and starvation tactics against civilian communities, and to carry out indiscriminate air attacks and barrel bombing of populated neighbourhoods.
The regime’s failure to comply with UN Security Council demands has led to the rapid deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Syria with half of Syria’s population now in need of humanitarian assistance. The UN’s estimate of the number of people in areas which are especially difficult or impossible to reach has risen by 1.2 million. 4.7 million people are now being deliberately denied access to urgent food, water and medical supplies.
The UN Secretary General has asked for the Security Council’s help in ensuring aid reaches all those who need it across the whole of Syria. We must heed this call. That is why the UK is pressing for the adoption of a new and tougher UN Security Council resolution which would give the UN’s humanitarian agencies the authority they have been asking for to deliver aid into Syria.
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