Press release
Syrian Opposition Coalition – Syria
Department of Media and Communications
July 1, 2020
Since the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2165 – which allowed the delivery of UN humanitarian aid into Syria through crossings that are not under the control of the Assad regime – the Assad regime and its allies have avidly sought to disrupt the resolution despite that it allowed the international community to provide aid through those crossing to millions of needy civilians and those fleeing the regime’s crimes in all Syrian areas.
Any attempt to deliver UN humanitarian aid exclusively through the borders crossings that are under the control of the Assad regime – which has been starving and displacing Syrian civilians – is tantamount to directly funding the Assad regime’s war machine against the Syrian people. The international community is risking extending its hand to war criminals and perpetrators of crimes against humanity as well as trusting the very apparatuses that committed these crimes, especially since the Assad regime limits the procedures related to the delivery of this aid to institutions affiliated with it that are widely known to be corrupt.
The Syrian Opposition Coalition stresses the necessity of extending UN Security Council Resolution 2165 and the delivery of UN aid through the border crossings outside the control of the Assad regime so as to ensure that this aid reaches millions of people in need. The SOC appeals to the UN Security Council to extend this resolution until the end of the crisis of displacement and the return of the IDP to their homes.
The fate of millions of Syrian civilians will remain under the mercy of the regime and its backers’ manipulation and exploitation of the issue of humanitarian aid so long as the international community fails to impose a genuine, inclusive political solution in accordance with international resolutions and hold to account the war criminals who have been killing the Syrian people and bombing them with barrel bombs and chemical weapons and who have been detaining, besieging and displacing millions for nearly a decade.