Syria’s response coordinators team said Friday that Bashar al-Assad’s regime and key ally Russia have launched more than 6 military campaigns in northwestern Syria since Sochi ceasefire reached in 2018 where about half of the population has been displaced, most of whom live in primitive camps lacking the minimum humanitarian requirements, exceeding 1,304 camps.
The local monitoring group recorded the death of 2293 people in the previous military campaigns, including 648 children, and 45 humanitarian workers.
The military operations were accompanied by widespread destruction of installations and infrastructure during the successive military campaigns in Idlib Governorate.
The number of targeted facilities since the signing of the Sochi agreement has reached more than 634 facilities, including schools, hospitals, marketplaces, service centers, and shelters, which has increased the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance in northwestern Syria to more than 3.6 out of the 4.3 million civilians living in the mentioned area.
The intense Russian attempts to stop the UN Security Council resolutions regarding the entry of humanitarian aid across borders into the affected areas in Syria, and work to limit the entry of humanitarian aid through the routes of the Syrian regime and its allies, as it was able to suspend the following decisions by controlling the time period for that decisions in exchange for political gains that are far from the scope of humanity, namely: Resolution No. 2156 of 2014, subsequent extensions of the resolution, Resolution 2191 of 2014, Resolution 2258 of 2015, Resolution 2332 of 2016, Resolution 2393 of 2017, Resolution 2449 of 2018, and Resolution 2504 for the year 2020, and Resolution 2533, which expires on July 10, according to the group’s statement.
The team also warned of the worsening of the humanitarian crisis in Syria in general and northwestern Syria in particular, due to the procedures for preventing aid, causing a humanitarian catastrophe that may affect civilians, which constitutes a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilians.
The obstacles Russia puts in the way of humanitarian aid provided to civilians will exacerbate their suffering and deprive them of their basic needs, which requires taking measures to ensure that aid is delivered to those most in need and not targeting or harassing humanitarian relief teams while carrying out their work, which will cause mass famine in northwestern Syria.
Halt the entry of humanitarian aid across borders into northwestern Syria will cause poverty rates to increase to unprecedented levels, reaching more than 90% of the population residing in the region, and an increase in cases of acute malnutrition among children and mothers more than previous rates, and economic collapse, especially with the rise in food prices and the loss of the Syrian pound in its purchasing power, and the increase in the number of people living in the camps, as a result of thousands of civilians resorting to settling in them and their complete inability to reconcile between shelter and food, and the lack of basic medical services in hospitals and medical points in the region, especially with the increasing concerns over the spread of COVID-19, in addition to the increase in the tragic situation within the camps served by humanitarian organizations, due to the inability to provide aid, knowing that these camps suffer greatly from the weakness of the aid provided.
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