The Syrian Coalition reiterated the urgent need for the EU to undertake practical steps to deter the Assad regime’s ongoing collective punishment of civilians across Syria and guarantee their protection.
Mouaffaq Nyrabia, the Syrian National Coalition’s Representative to the Benelux and EU, delivered today a letter to Ambassadors of the Political and Security Committee of the Council of the EU, urging the European Union to ensure unconditional, immediate, and unrestricted humanitarian access to Madaya and across Syria.
Nyrabia urged the EU “to ensure that any viable agreement to provide aid across Syria must be unconditional and closely monitored to ensure immediate unrestricted humanitarian access.”
“This remains an unacceptable situation where innocent civilians will continue to starve to death while the regime determines the parameters of granting access to the UN aid agencies. The lack of credible measures to enforce international law in Syria continues to put millions of civilians at risk – including the security of Europe – and further undermine the possibility for a political solution to this conflict,” Nyrabia added.
The letter also said that “as we approach the fifth year of this conflict, the UN and EU agencies cannot continue to allow the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid to be determined by the Assad regime and its allies, including the proscribed terrorist group Hezbollah. This approach saw only 10% of all requests last year for UN aid delivery inside Syria approved.”
The letter called for ensuring “that UN and EU agencies and humanitarian NGOs have immediate, unrestricted, unconditional and sustained access to Madaya, as required by UN Security Council resolutions 2139 (2014), 2165 (2014), 2191 (2014) and 2258 (2015).”
Furthermore, the letter called for “monitoring closely the ongoing developments in Madaya, and ensure that any attempt by the Assad regime to deny or restrict access is met with clear consequences.”
The letter also demanded “the enforcement of Security Council resolutions 2139 (2014), 2165 (2014), 2191 (2014) and 2258 (2015), and instruct UN and EU agencies to demand the delivery of aid to all besieged and hard-to-reach areas, irrespective of the Assad regime’s consent.”
Nyrabia concluded the letter by urging the EU to “condemn in the strongest terms the Assad regime’s deliberate starvation of innocent civilians across Syria, and make clear that the use of starvation as a method of warfare amounts to a war crime under international law.” (Source: Syrian Coalition)
