UN special envoy’s senior adviser Jan Egeland warned of dire situation in Idlib province as more forcibly displaced civilians are arriving from eastern Ghouta. The Syrian Coalition stressed the need to protect civilians and prevent any new humanitarian disaster in the densely populated province.
More than half a million men, women and children have been displaced in and around Idlib and around eastern Ghouta in the first three months of the year, Egeland told reporters after a meeting of the Humanitarian Task Force of the International Syria Support Group on Syria in Geneva on Wednesday.
“Evacuations of civilians are desperate measures in desperate times,” Egeland said. He noted that as many as 130,000 people have been displaced from eastern Ghouta since the March 9.
The UN official said that Idlib province has become the biggest cluster of refugee or displacement camps in the world as 1.5 million people there are displaced.
Regarding the humanitarian situation in Douma, Egeland said that the besieged district has not been reached since the last inter-agency convoy got there in mid-March.
President of the Syrian Coalition Abdulrahman Mustafa has recently sent letters to the United Nations, friends of Syria, and the Arab League to highlight the extremely dire situation in Idlib province and to warn of the threat of continued military attacks on the province. The province is home to over two million people, mostly of whom were displaced from various areas across Syria.
President Mustafa underscored that the series of forced displacement operations are a war crime that cannot be ignored. He called on the international community to take serious stand against the crimes being committed by the Assad regime and Russia against civilians in Syria and to put an end to the mass forced displacement and demographic change operations. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
