The United Nations has described conditions placed by the Syrian government on aid deliveries to the country’s northwestern areas from Turkey as “unacceptable”.
Syria conditioned life-saving support on the “full cooperation and coordination with the government”, the UN not communicating with “terrorist organisations” and their affiliates, and on the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent running aid operations.
In a note sent to the UN Security Council on Friday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the Syrian proposal called those conditions “unacceptable” for carrying out “principled humanitarian operations”, news agencies reported.
Stipulating that aid deliveries must be overseen by the Red Cross or Red Crescent is “neither consistent with the independence of the United Nations nor practical”, since those organisations “are not present in northwest Syria”, OCHA said.
The agency responsible for overseeing humanitarian aid also noted that the Syrian government’s request that deliveries be carried out in coordination with Damascus requires “review” and that the mechanism for aid delivery should not “infringe on the impartiality …, neutrality, and independence of the United Nations’ humanitarian operations in Syria.”
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