Foreign Secretary calls for UN action on Syrian humanitarian crisis
27 Jun 2014 04:26 PM
Foreign Secretary calls
for further UN Security Council action to ensure aid gets to the millions who
need it in Syria.
Speaking as the UN presents its
monthly report on humanitarian access in Syria, Foreign Secretary William Hague
said:
Four months after UN Security
Council resolution 2139 was unanimously passed to address the desperate
humanitarian situation in Syria, Assad’s regime continues to block aid
from getting to millions who urgently need it, to use siege and starvation
tactics against civilian communities, and to carry out indiscriminate air
attacks and barrel bombing of populated neighbourhoods.
The regime’s failure to
comply with UN Security Council demands has led to the rapid deterioration of
the humanitarian situation in Syria with half of Syria’s population now
in need of humanitarian assistance. The UN’s estimate of the number of
people in areas which are especially difficult or impossible to reach has risen
by 1.2 million. 4.7 million people are now being deliberately denied access to
urgent food, water and medical supplies.
The UN Secretary General has
asked for the Security Council’s help in ensuring aid reaches all those
who need it across the whole of Syria. We must heed this call. That is why the
UK is pressing for the adoption of a new and tougher UN Security Council
resolution which would give the UN’s humanitarian agencies the authority
they have been asking for to deliver aid into Syria.
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