The United Nation’s top humanitarian affairs official on Monday appealed to the UN Security Council for continued aid deliveries to Syria’s civilian population across borders and through front lines, including to the Rukban refugee camp near the Syrian-Jordanian border.
Mark Lowcock, UN Under-Secretary-General for humanitarian affairs, said that “there are continuing reports of children dying due to poor sanitary conditions and a lack of healthcare.”
Lowcock drew the UN Security Council’s attention to conditions at Rukban, home to some 60,000 people in the desert on the border of Syria and Jordan. He said the camp’s population has not received assistance since January, “and they are increasingly desperate.”
On Saturday, the United Nations announced it was postponing the sending of aid convoy to the camp for “security reasons.”
Lowcock called on the UN Security Council to support the renewal for another year of resolutions 2165 and 2393, in particular to sustain cross-border aid essential to support and protect more than three million people in Idlib. He said that this extension “remains of the highest importance.”
France’s Ambassador Francois Delattre, who described conditions at Rukban as “nightmarish,” said allowing access to aid was incumbent on all parties.
“It is unacceptable that the regime has blocked inter-agency convoys for more than two months now and put in place a punitive strategy to channel the aides to ‘reconciled’ zones,” Delattre said.
According to the camp administration, there are thousands of people with disabilities in the camp who need urgent medical care, including 1,460 women, 1,621 men, and 4,273 children. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department + Agencies)
