UN Safety Council meets on help to quake-hit Syria

UNITED NATIONS: The UN Safety Council meets behind closed doorways Monday to handle methods to spice up humanitarian help to Syria following the devastating current earthquake, amid rising calls to open new border crossings to ship help.

The assembly requested by Switzerland and Brazil — the United Nations co-leaders on the Syria humanitarian file — will function a presentation to council members by UN humanitarian affairs chief Martin Griffiths, who this weekend visited Turkey and Syria the place anger over the tempo of help has swelled.

However even earlier than the session, his message was clear.

“Now we have to this point failed the folks in north-west Syria,” Griffiths stated Sunday on Twitter.

“They rightly really feel deserted,” he stated, including that it was the worldwide neighborhood’s obligation “to right this failure as quick as we will.”

Turkiye-Syria quake toll rises above 35,000

The 7.8-magnitude quake that struck Syria and Turkey on February 5 has to this point killed greater than 35,000 folks and left communities in each nations determined for emergency assist.

Earlier than the earthquake struck, nearly all the essential humanitarian help for the greater than 4 million folks dwelling in rebel-controlled areas of northwestern Syria was being delivered from Turkey by means of the Bab al-Hawa crossing.

That is because of a cross-border mechanism created in 2014 by a UN decision, contested by Damascus but additionally by Moscow, a everlasting Safety Council member with veto energy, which has sought in recent times to cut back the variety of crossings from 4 to 1.

Assist supply by means of Bab al-Hawa was interrupted by the quake however has since resumed, and calls to open different crossings are multiplying.

“Individuals within the affected areas are relying on us,” Washington’s UN ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield stated Sunday in a press release.

“We should vote instantly on a decision to heed the UN’s name for authorization of further border crossings for the supply of humanitarian help.”

Malta’s UN ambassador Vanessa Frazier, who chairs the 15-member Safety Council this month, stated members have but to start formal discussions on a decision, “however I am certain that we are going to.”

“We’re doing our job,” she stated, when requested about criticism that the council was performing too slowly.

“There is not any level in assembly for us with out the data” coming from specialists on the bottom, Frazier added.