Currently, the UN can only use one border crossing to care for earthquake victims in north-west Syria. How can more be opened?
United Nations Help on the way to Idlib
14 trucks with aid supplies crossed the Bab al-Hawa border crossing between Turkey and Syria this Friday. From there, the United Nations (UN) trucks continued towards Idlib to bring blankets, mattresses, tents and solar lamps to the people in the Syrian earthquake zone. A UN spokesman in Geneva said the aid would be enough for around 1,100 families.
But more than four million people live in the province of Idlib in northwestern Syria. Hundreds of thousands are likely to be directly affected by the February 6 earthquake that shook southern Turkey and northern Syria. Even before the natural disaster, nine out of ten people around Idlib were dependent on outside help – there has been a civil war in Syria since 2011.
So it would not take 14 trucks, but hundreds, to alleviate the greatest need of the people in north-west Syria. “What has arrived so far is not even close to enough,” says Kelly Petillo, Syria expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
UN resolution made help possible
The problem: Bashar al-Assad's regime in Damascus has been preventing aid from reaching north-west Syria for years. Because the area around Idlib is under the control of rebels and Islamists.
Destruction in Sarmada in the northwest Syria
“Since 2014 there has been a UN Security Council resolution that allows aid across the Turkish border – even without the consent of the Assad regime,” Petillo explained in a DW interview. “But since 2018, Russia in the UN Security Council, with the support of China, has ensured that the number of border crossings that can be used for this purpose is increasingly restricted.”
With Assad or without Assad?< /h2>
Bab al-Hawa is now the only remaining border crossing that the United Nations is allowed to use for its aid. A UN Security Council resolution could open other crossings to allow more aid to flow. However, Petillo believes it is “unfortunately not very likely” that Russian President and Assad ally Vladimir Putin will agree to this. Like all permanent members, Russia can block any decision of the World Security Council.
An alternative would be to provide so-called cross-line help. In other words, aid that first goes to the areas held by Assad and is to be brought from there to the rebel areas. “This kind of help has been very unsuccessful so far,” says Petillo. “Nonetheless, they shouldn't be ruled out.” Turkey is currently negotiating to open a border crossing to Assad-controlled part of northern Syria for Crossline aid. “But it's very unclear how far the negotiations really are.”
“Everything has to be tried,” says Kelly Petillo from the European Council on Foreign Relations
In an interview with DW-TV, Syria expert Bente Scheller from the Heinrich Böll Foundation dampened expectations of such a solution : “It makes no sense to lift sanctions and hope that humanitarian aid will arrive,” says Scheller. “Because that depends primarily on the political will of the Syrian regime. And so far we have not been able to see that the regime is interested in the fate of its citizens.”
So what's left for the United Nations? Dropping relief supplies from the air is conceivable, says Petillo from the ECFR. And one could think about using further border crossings from Turkey to Syria without waiting for a corresponding resolution from the UN Security Council. “That would be a unilateral measure and of course that makes things very complicated,” said Petillo. “But in the absence of alternatives and given the scale of the emergency, every effort must be made.”