syria

UN Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, briefs the Security Council on the situation in the Middle East, including Syria.
UN Photo/Mark Garten

Remain united for Syrians, UN envoy de Mistura urges Security Council

20 December 2018
Peace and Security

Addressing the problems plaguing Syria and bring years of brutal fighting to an end, requires further “genuine effort” on the part of influential countries, to talk to each other and work constructively, the veteran United Nations Special Envoy for Syria has said.

Staffan de Mistura, United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, briefs the press after the Joint Meeting on Syria, at the Palais des Nations, Geneva. 18 December 2018.
UN Photo/Violaine Martin

Worth going ‘extra mile’ for a new Syrian constitution, UN envoy urges

18 December 2018
Peace and Security

Efforts to establish a constitutional committee for Syria are worth going the “extra mile” for, UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Tuesday, after meeting the foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Turkey - guarantors of a fragile ceasefire in the wartorn country – who agreed that it should convene for the first time early next year, in Geneva.

Syrian children shelter in the doorway of a house, amid gunfire and shelling, in a city affected by the conflict.
UNICEF/NYHQ2012-0218/Romenzi

Four million Syrian children have only known war since birth: UNICEF

13 December 2018
Peace and Security

Half of Syria’s children, that’s four million, have grown up only knowing a life of violence, as the war-battered country enters its eighth year of conflict, the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) said on Thursday.

Bike ride in Damascus, Syria (2015). The event was promoted by Sarah Zein's initiative "Yalla Let's Bike".
Photo courtesy of 'Come On, Let’s Bike'

Beating climate change, boosting women: bike advocate takes to Damascus streets

13 December 2018
Interviews

When “conflict was underway, and checkpoints were increasing everywhere” in the Syrian capital, Damascus, Sarah Zein started biking to avoid the traffic, but verbal sexual harassment on the streets, soon became a big problem. The co-founder of “Yalla Let's Bike" – or Come on Let's Bike - sat down for an interview with UN News’s Yasmina Guerda at the COP24 climate change conference in Poland, where she received an award for her work on gender and climate. 

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Seated on a rug atop the dirt ground, two girls complete homework outside their tent home, in the Kawergosk camp for Syrian refugees, west of Erbil, Iraq.
UNICEF/Romenzi

Bid to raise $5.5 billion for millions of Syrians and their host communities

11 December 2018
Humanitarian Aid

Some 5.6 million Syrians need help outside the war-torn country and one million of them are children born in exile, UN agencies and partners said on Tuesday, in an appeal for $5.5 billion to cover humanitarian needs for 2019.

Seven-year-old girl in Syria.
UNOCHA/Ghalia Seifo

Major UN aid operation for 650,000 gets underway across Syria-Jordan border

10 December 2018
Humanitarian Aid

The United Nations began a four-week operation on Sunday, delivering lifesaving assistance to hundreds of thousands of Syrians in desperate need, from across the border in neighbouring Jordan.

Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, speaks to the press at UN Headquarters in New York.
UN Photo/Laura Jarriel

Syrian civilians must be protected amid ISIL executions and airstrikes: Bachelet

5 December 2018
Human Rights

Reports that violent extremists in Syria have executed civilians in the east of the war-torn country have been condemned by the UN’s top rights official, Michelle Bachelet.

Displaced Yemeni boys sit on mattresses distributed as part of UNHCR's emergency relief effort in Sirwah,Yemen. More than two million Yemenis have been uprooted by the civil war which began in March 2015.
MDF/M. Hudair

Global aid appeal targets more than 93 million most in need next year

4 December 2018
Humanitarian Aid

Conflict has pushed tens of millions of people into a situation where they are in urgent need of help, the UN’s relief chief said on Tuesday, in an appeal for funds that could top $25 billion to support life-saving aid projects in over 40 countries next year.

In this file photo, a convoy of UN humanitarian vehicles moves through the war-ravaged city of Homs. While aid access has improved in parts of Syria, millions of civilians remain dependent on cross-border deliveries of food and other aid.
© UNICEF/UN056256/Ebo

Security Council urged to help spare Syrians from ‘devastation’

29 November 2018
Humanitarian Aid

An escalation in fighting across northern Syria illustrates the “fragility” of the situation in the war-torn region, a senior UN humanitarian official said on Thursday, urging sustained international efforts to protect millions trapped there, from “devastation.”

Syrian children shelter in the doorway of a house, amid gunfire and shelling, in a city affected by the conflict.
UNICEF/NYHQ2012-0218/Romenzi

Suffering of thousands of war-affected Syrian children ‘unprecedented and unacceptable’

27 November 2018
Peace and Security

Well over 7,000 child casualties in Syria’s brutal armed conflict have been verified over the last five years, but this is just “the tip of the iceberg,” the United Nations Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the crisis lamented on Tuesday, with thousands more cases likely going unreported.