Ljanuary 10, 2023 was a crucial date for millions of Syrians: on this day, UN resolution no.oh 2642, voted in July 2022, which made it possible to deliver a last humanitarian aid in the north-west of the country to 4 million people, of whom almost half live in camps and lack everything – food, water, heating, care .
“Last Help” because, since 2019, the mechanism of Russian vetoes in the Security Council has applied itself to inexorably reducing the number of delivery points for this vital aid. With success, since it now only arrives via Bab Al-Hawa, on the Turkish border, for periods of six months and no longer a year. Duration that Russia intended to reduce to nothing since “the war is over” ; but she has just granted another six months – so as not to irritate Erdogan too much.
On December 21, 2022, UN Deputy Secretary General Martin Griffiths spoke of a “unprecedented economic and humanitarian crisis”particularly acute in northern Syria, but which now hit the whole country, with 90% of people below the poverty line, and 14.6 million dependent on humanitarian aid – probably 15.3 million in 2023.
A worsening humanitarian situation
The living and hygienic conditions in the camps in the North-West caused the return of cholera: on December 18, there were about a hundred deaths and 62,000 suspected cases. We can see, in this context, what stopping humanitarian aid could mean: this population would be handed over to the violence of the siege, this deadly weapon that Bashar Al-Assad used for ten years against each city or region that escaped under his control.
The humanitarian assistance policy to which Western countries had to confine themselves at the UN, under the pressure of Russian vetoes, has thus turned into a weapon of war, and the financial disengagement of the international community raises fears of the worst: the plan The 2022 humanitarian response plan received only 43% of the expected funds, and the 2022-2023 winter preparedness plan, which concerns 6 million people, is only 21% funded.
Behind these figures, it is actually a war who keep on going. On December 21, the UN special envoy, Geir Pedersen, recalled that the conflict was far from over, that while the patchwork of bilateral Turkey-Russia-United States agreements had reduced the attacks, the situation remained explosive, and deadly.
A response with fierce repression
Across the country, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, 926 civilians were killed in 2022, including 232 children; 2,221 people were arrested and imprisoned, including 148 children; and the fate of 111,000 missing people is still uncertain. In the areas it controls (70% of the country), the government persists in disastrous economic management.
You have 64.22% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.