Calls Grow for Broader Access to Quake Areas of Northwest Syria

The U.N. Security Council will this week consider whether to authorize the opening of additional border crossings into northwest Syria in order to speed humanitarian assistance to earthquake victims there.

“People in the affected areas are counting on us,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in a statement Sunday. “They are appealing to our common humanity to help in their moment of need. We cannot let them down — we must vote immediately on a resolution to heed the U.N.’s call for authorization of additional border crossings for the delivery of humanitarian assistance. We have the power to act. It’s time to move with urgency and purpose.”

The U.N. has come under criticism from many quarters for the slow response to people inside Syria, particularly in the northern areas which are outside government control and difficult to access.

U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths acknowledged the difficulties Sunday in a tweet.

The first aid convoy crossed into northwest Syria on February 9, after the road from the U.N.’s transshipment hub at Gaziantep in Turkey was cleared of rubble. In total since the quake, the U.N. says 58 trucks have crossed into northwest Syria from the hub in Turkey, carrying mainly shelter and non-food items. That included six trucks on Monday.

Griffiths visited quake-affected areas of Turkey in the past few days, including Kahramanmaras, the earthquake’s epicenter in southern Turkey. On Monday he was in the Syrian city of Aleppo where he spoke to reporters.

“I’ve come from Türkiye and seen devastating scenes,” he said, using Turkey’s official name. “I had hoped that Aleppo, being farther from the earthquakes, would have suffered less, but it hasn’t. Aleppo’s pain is visible to all.”

The U.N. humanitarian chief then went to Damascus, where he met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and other officials.

“President al-Assad affirmed the need for bringing in the urgent aid to all areas in Syria including those that are subjected to occupation and the dominance of the armed terrorist groups,” the official Syrian news agency SANA said about the meeting.

The U.N. humanitarian chief plans to launch flash appeals this week to fund quake-related humanitarian operations in both countries for the next three months.

“What we’ve seen happening in these zones of the earthquake is that the rescue phase is dragging live people out from the rubble, and finding those who have died in the rubble, that’s coming to a close. And now the humanitarian phase, the urgency of providing shelter, psychosocial care, food, schooling, and a sense of the future for these people, that’s our obligation now,” Griffiths said in Aleppo.

He said he will brief U.N. Security Council members in a private meeting Monday from the field. On Sunday, Griffiths said more access points are needed to get more aid out fast. That would require the council to adopt a resolution authorizing them.

“We need to be briefed, we need to be informed, for us to be able to take a decision to move forward,” council president Maltese Ambassador Vanessa Frazier told reporters Monday ahead of the meeting. “This couldn’t be done just because we see on the news what is going on.”

Difficulties

Beginning in 2014, the 15-nation council has authorized the use of border crossings from Turkey, Iraq and Jordan into Syria to assist millions of people in hard-to-reach areas of the country due to the civil war.

But since 2019, Russia has used or threaten to use its veto to shut the Iraqi and Jordanian crossings, as well as a Turkish one. What remains is a single crossing, Bab al-Hawa, which before the February 6 earthquakes saw between 500 and 600 trucks loaded with aid pass monthly from Turkey. That vital aid reaches 2.4 million Syrians each month.

Hours after the earthquakes on February 6, Syria’s U.N. ambassador appealed for international assistance for his country, adding there is “access from inside Syria.” Bassam al-Sabbagh said donors should coordinate with Damascus.

The Assad government prefers to be the conduit for aid and for it to be distributed across conflict front lines. But many guarantees are needed to carry out these missions and they are much less frequent than cross-border operations. The U.N. says both methods should be used to get the most aid to the most people.

U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen met with Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad on Monday. Pedersen said after the meeting that the issue of getting aid into the northwest “is now being corrected” and he also appealed for humanitarians to be able to utilize both cross-border and crossline options.

Since the earthquake one week ago, the U.N. has not been able to get any aid moving across front lines, although it is working on it.

“We’ve had positive discussions with the government; it’s given us some assurances,” said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric. “We are waiting for all parties to give us those greenlights.”

Dujarric said the U.N. is working on all fronts to quickly get more aid flowing across Syria.

“The secretary-general’s message is clear: We need to ensure that every pathway to bringing more aid into Syria, including the northwest, is open and used freely – free of any restrictions,” Dujarric said. “And for that, we need all parties to put any politics aside.”
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