Losing momentum in delivering aid to Syria, Egeland says

GENEVA, Switzerland – The United Nations voiced concern on Thursday (March 31) over growing difficulties in delivering aid to besieged areas in Syria, with convoys delayed or surgical equipment being removed, mainly by government forces.

Jan Egeland, chairman of a U.N. task force on humanitarian aid, called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s main allies Russia and Iran to bring more pressure to bear on the government to enable deliveries of food and medicines.

“We are afraid now to lose some of the momentum that we got after the Munich meeting and there are several reasons for that. We still have not gotten access, greenlight to go at all to Douma, Daraya, and east Harasta – three areas. Douma, big place, more than 90,000 people in need; Daraya, a place where conditions are horrendous for the relatively few civilians who are still there,” he told reporters after major and regional powers held a weekly meeting to review progress during the month-long ceasefire.

The United Nations has reached 150,000 people living in 11 of 18 besieged areas in Syria, out of a total of nearly 500,000 people in need.

But Egeland said Damascus has been less responsive to requests for aid convoys than it was after world powers agreed in Munich in early February to a cessation of hostilities to allow aid to be delivered.

“All of the countries that have influence – and it’s not only Russia – have to help us. We have to be very crystal clear with the government but also armed opposition groups, that it cannot continue like now, we must be able to get to the remaining besieged areas and we cannot allow medical services to be exempted,” he said.

Egeland said three children in government-besieged Madaya bled to death earlier this week because they could not be evacuated for medical treatment after an unexploded bomb they were playing with exploded.

“Surgical equiment is still taken off convoys, medical personnel is still not allowed into the besieged areas and medical evacuations are still not allowed. Within the last 72 hours, three children bled to death in Madaya. They were playing with an unexploded bomb, they were gravely wounded, but they didn’t die. They died because a medical evacuation was not allowed, not possible to organise,” he said.

But he added he believed the U.N. World Food Programme would be able to start regular air drops of vital supplies to 200,000 people trapped in Islamic State-besieged Deir al-Zor in the next two weeks.