United Nations hesitates on delivering humanitarian aid by air to Syrians

The UN announced Monday that it will focus on land rather than air delivery of humanitarian aid to Syrians in need.

|
Omar Sanadiki/Reuters
Aid workers at the Damascus airport unload supplies from a Czech military airplane into a Syrian Arab Red Crescent truck on Sunday.

The United Nations said Monday it is focusing on delivery of humanitarian aid by road to millions of Syrians in need of help in the war-torn country despite an earlier announcement that it would formally ask Damascus to allow more costly and difficult air drops to besieged areas.

The U.N. had requested access to 34 locations to help 1.1 million people in June and Syria approved 23 requests in full and six partially, while rejecting five. France's U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre, the current Security Council president, said Friday the U.N. would send Damascus a letter on Sunday to authorize humanitarian air drops to all the areas where access was denied.

But Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told reporters that the U.N. is now concentrating on continuing land-based deliveries rather than parachuting pallets of supplies to the needy or sending aid by helicopter.

"At this point the focus is on land deliveries," he said, noting that safety and logistical issues make air drops less than optimal. "If we see that we are getting the land access that we need, that's the way we will go."

Two U.N. diplomats said Monday, however, that the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Syria had sent a letter to the Syrian government on Sunday requesting authorization for air drops to four besieged areas. The diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because contacts were private, said the U.N. asked for a response by June 10.

The 5-year-old civil war in Syria has killed some 250,000 people, displaced millions and left vast swaths of the country in ruins, enabling the Islamic State extremist group to take control of large areas of the country. A Russia- and U.S.-brokered truce began on Feb. 27, but fighting has continued in many areas.

Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer contributed to this report.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to United Nations hesitates on delivering humanitarian aid by air to Syrians
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2016/0607/United-Nations-hesitates-on-delivering-humanitarian-aid-by-air-to-Syrians
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe