Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzia, has stressed that the implementation of reconstruction projects in Syria is still subject to initial political conditions on the part of donors, which hinders these projects and causes suffering for the Syrians.
Nebenzia stressed at a meeting of the UN Security Council on the situation in Syria that “the United Nations humanitarian plan for Syria for the year 2022 for the early recovery of medical and educational facilities and water networks suffers from a significant lack of funding.”
“These reasons play a major role in that more than half of the Syrians live in areas that need to be demined so far, while the electricity supply is still experiencing severe shortages,” Nebenzia added.
Nebenzia noted that he does not see any justification for extending the mechanism for the delivery of humanitarian aid across the border to Syria after its term expires next July.
He said that the situation has not changed after 9 months of the Security Council’s decision to extend the work of Bab al-Hawa crossing, as the purpose of this decision was for aid to reach all parts of Syria and to work on early recovery, but during this time only three convoys managed to cross to Idleb and there is no supply to the north of the country from Damascus at all.
Nebenzia added that he “hears from time to time about unsafe conditions for the activities of humanitarian workers,” explaining that “we see all this as a lack of willingness to solve the problem of humanitarian aid to Syria, including to Idleb… Let’s not hide the fact that under these circumstances there are practically no grounds for a further extension of the decision to transfer aid across the border.”
Source: Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA)