Permanent Mission of New Zealand to the United Nations: Transcript

Syria Humanitarian stakeout

As delivered by Gerard van Bohemen, Permanent Representative of New Zealand and Román Oyarzun Marchesi, Permanent Representative of Spain

27 January 2016, New York

UNTV VIDEO AVAILABLE: here

Gerard van Bohemen (New Zealand): Good morning everybody. My Spanish colleague and I are out here today to talk about the Syria humanitarian situation again. As you know, we’ve just had our monthly briefing from Mr Stephen O’Brien, the head of Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. We also requested today to have a briefing from Ertharin Cousin, the Executive Director of the World Food Programme, so that we would have a good picture of the situation as it stands.

You’ve all been aware of the acute starvation in Madaya and the other towns and the fact that some relief has got in to those towns, what we were told today is that effectively one month’s supply has got into those towns and they’re now eating through that. The point was made very strongly that what we need now is sustained access for all of the 19 locations over which about 480,000 people are located in these besieged towns.

Our focus today was on that big point, we need sustained access and you can’t make access to humanitarian relief supplies a pawn in a political game. And the second point we pushed very strongly was for some early warning mechanisms and clear procedures that are followed so that we can get visibility on these issues before they become acute.

Roman Oyarzun Marchesi (Spain): Well thank you very much, thank you for being here again. We have consultations every month, unfortunately we have to recognise that the numbers are getting worse and worse and I wouldn’t like to say numbers because, in reality we are talking about people, we are talking about families, we’re talking about kids.

So we need to change, we need to change the dynamics and I hope that because of the meeting we had today and the conversations that will begin in 48 hours that will allow us, everybody to (inaudible). Because the situation is going from bad to worse, that is why New Zealand and Spain did ask for briefing of the Executive Director of World Food Programme. I think we had an interesting discussion, we identified a better way to have an early warning mechanism in order to avoid new Madayas. We need to avoid new Madayas. We received, as well, a briefing from Stephen O’Brien and he worked on access. Access is a key thing and numbers on access are very bad.

We came up with two proposals, the first one is that we consider the Syrian regime should not delay more than 90 days to respond to any request coming from OCHA, that is an important consideration. The second thing, we need to work with OCHA to avoid this high rate of non-answering or refusals. The Security Council has to become the backup of OCHA, in order to perform better on the ground.

Finally, we are 48 hours away from Geneva, and when we are 48 hours away what we need and I will say it again and again, we need strict compliance with International Humanitarian Law and we definitely need to stop now aerial attacks, we need to stop now today aerial attacks.

Question: Ambassadors, there appears to be a huge disparity between what is needed on the ground and what the reality is. You talk a lot about the Geneva meeting that starts in 48 hours, is there now a deferral of responsibility from the Security Council to what could possibly come out of Geneva which many observers say won’t be much?

Gerard van Bohemen (New Zealand): No, it’s quite the reverse point that I was making today. The obligation of humanitarian access exists irrespective of what happens in Geneva and we’re very, very strong on that point and very, very strong that we must not politicise this whole question of humanitarian access.

Equally, we know that the answer to the problem is a peace agreement, which is what Geneva is about. So these things are linked, in that sense, but we’re certainly not saying the humanitarian situation is shelved until there is some progress in Geneva, quite the reverse.

Question: Ambassador, at one of the more recent meetings on Syria you asked about the feasibility of airdrops, did you hear any more about that today?

Gerard van Bohemen (New Zealand): We had quite a good conversation about that today, the point was made that all options are being looked at, but there are really difficult constraints around airdrops.

There are safety issues about airspace safety issues. There’s about how you can drop food safely on the ground in some of these situations and also the point was made that an airdrop doesn’t deliver the amount of food you need for the sort of situations we’re talking about. So they’re palliative, if they work at all.

Question: Ambassador, you seem to say that the peace talks would deal with this issue of humanitarian access, but WFP was talking about Deir Ezzor which seems to be besieged by ISIS, what’s the plan or strategy if they’re not part of the peace talks to deal with that siege of 100,000 or some people say 200,000 people?

Roman Oyarzun Marchesi (Spain): We shouldn’t lose focus of this, we do not only have in Syria 200,000 besieged people, we have 400,000 and if I heard well, the numbers were even higher it was mentioned even 500,000.

What can we do? Well, in the case of those besieged areas by Syrian regime, it is very clear that we have an interlocutor, we have a member of the United Nations, a member we can speak with.

In the case of the besieged areas by ISIL/Daesh, that is a very difficult thing to do but that doesn’t mean we forget about them, that doesn’t mean that these are different people, that they have less rights, we will have to do something but the situation on the ground doesn’t make it very easy.

[ENDS]

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