At a time when resources for refugees from Syria is declining, the top United Nations humanitarian official in Lebanon, the country host to some 1.5 million Syrian and several thousand Palestinian refugees, has launched a funding allocation to ensure that critical relief programmes can be sustained.
Dozens of children have been killed since fighting began in the north-western Syrian town of Afrin, where people are under bombardment, hospitals have been shut down and water supplies cut off, the United Nations has reported.
More than 900 children in Syria were killed last year, making 2017 the deadliest year for children in the country’s ongoing conflict, a senior United Nations official told the Geneva-based Human Rights Council on Tuesday, warning that the grim statistics may only be the tip of the iceberg.
Despite a United Nations Security Council demand to institute a 30-day ceasefire across Syria, airstrikes, shelling and ground offensives have intensified in Eastern Ghouta, Secretary-General António Guterres reported Monday, warning that the conflict is entering its eighth year with the “grimmest” reality on the ground.
The United Nations and partners on Friday reached the Syrian city of Douma in Eastern Ghouta to complete distribution of food aid after intense shelling cut short deliveries to the war-torn enclave earlier this week.
After seven years of brutal conflict in Syria, there are no clear winners, “but the losers are plain to see,” the United Nations refugee agency chief said Friday, describing the “colossal human tragedy” that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, driven 6.1 million people from their homes and forced 5.6 million others to seek safety in neighbouring countries.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has called on parties to the conflict in Syria to allow a humanitarian convoy to complete the delivery of supplies to Douma in eastern Ghouta planned for Thursday.
The brutal conflict in Syria has not only claimed civilians as unintentional victims but has seen all warring parties deliberately target them with complete impunity employing unlawful methods of warfare, a new report by a United Nations-mandated inquiry on the war-ravaged country has said.
A United Nations-Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) humanitarian convoy arrived in the besieged Syrian enclave of Eastern Ghouta on Monday bringing life-saving aid to thousands of desperate people, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has reported.
Despite the Security Council’s demand for a ceasefire throughout Syria, violence continues to plague the war-ravaged country, worsening the humanitarian situation and the suffering of its people, top United Nations political and relief officials said Wednesday, calling on all parties to the conflict to “fulfil their obligations to end the fighting.”
