The UK should press the United Nations to take a tougher stance with the Syrian government over the delivery of aid to besieged towns, a Labour MP has said.
Jo Cox, MP for Batley and Spen, said the government should assert that UN aid agencies need only notify the Syrian government of aid delivery plans, rather than seek its permission.
The issue of access to aid is likely to come up at a conference in London on 4 February convened by David Cameron and Angela Merkel and designed to raise about $7bn (£5bn) for refugees. It is hoped that the conference will also set out a long-term plan to provide schooling for refugee children and some jobs. More than four million refugees are in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan, and many more millions inside Syria are in need of aid.
Last week more than 100 Syrian humanitarian workers published an open letter claiming the UN had been so submissive towards Damascus, or fearful of losing its workers’ visas, that it had forfeited its impartiality.
“Those whose loved ones die from malnutrition-related illnesses or a lack of basic medical care will never forgive the UN staff who sit minutes away in luxury hotels, within earshot of the bombing,” the aid workers wrote.
In a letter to Justine Greening, the UK’s international development secretary, Cox pointed out that previous UN security council resolutions stated that aid should be delivered through the most direct routes “with notification to the Syrian authorities”.
Cox asked: “Whilse, of course, safety assessments and access negotiation should be carried out, do you agree that it would be sufficient for UN agencies to notify the Syrian authorities of deliveries rather than seek official permission, as is currently being requested from the Syrian ministry of foreign affairs for every aid delivery?”
She also asked Greening to explain why the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) was reporting lower figures for those under siege than other groups on the ground.
Siege Watch claims as many as one million Syrians are under siege from either the government, Islamic State or the opposition forces. Doctors without Borders has put the figure at two million, substantially higher than the 400,000 figure issued by the OCHA, which is chaired by a former British government minister, Stephen O’Brien.
Cox added that the December OCHA report to the security council was “vague on which parties blocked access to those aid deliveries that were unsuccessful”.
She added: “As we both know, it is the Assad regime that is denying the majority of aid deliveries to those in besieged areas – including within the Isis siege of Deir el-Zour, where there is an airport that could be used to airlift in aid.
“However, the current OCHA reporting makes this extremely unclear. The UN would surely not be compromising its impartiality by plainly reporting which groups are denying access to the deliveries that the security council has given it authorisation to implement. This would permit the UK and others to use this information to help pressure allies of the Assad regime, such as Russia and Iran, for greater access.”
Syrian opposition groups have said they will not attend peace talks scheduled to start in Geneva on Monday unless sieges are lifted and ceasefires implemented in line with UN resolutions.