UN: situation in Syria is a humanitarian catastrophe

PanARMENIAN.Net - Syrian families have been burned in their homes, people bombed waiting for bread, children tortured, raped and murdered and cities reduced to rubble in Syria's two-year-old war that has sparked a humanitarian catastrophe, the United Nations said on Thursday, April 18, according to Reuters.

The bleak assessment by top UN humanitarian officials motivated the Security Council, which has been deadlocked over how to deal with the crisis since it began, to reach agreement on a non-binding statement demanding an end to the escalating violence and condemning human rights abuses by all sides.

A quarter of Syria's 22 million people are displaced within the country and 1.3 million have fled to other states in the Middle East and North Africa, UN aid chief Valerie Amos and UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told the UN Security Council.

It was a rare public briefing of the Security Council on the conflict in Syria, which was called for by Australia, and Amos pleaded for the 15 council members to "take the action necessary to end this brutal conflict."

"The situation in Syria is a humanitarian catastrophe with ordinary people paying the price for the failure to end the conflict," Amos said. "I do not have an answer for those Syrians I have spoken to who asked me why the world has abandoned them."

"Children are among the ones who suffer most," Amos said. "Children have been murdered, tortured and subjected to sexual violence. Many do not have enough food to eat. Millions have been traumatized by the horrors ... This brutal conflict is not only shattering Syria's present, it is destroying its future."

Amos said there were 6.8 million people inside Syria in need of aid.

She said that of the $1.5 billion pledged by international donors to cover Syria's humanitarian needs until June, only about half had been paid. She also painted a dire picture of international efforts to deliver aid within Syria.

Bureaucratic obstacles make it almost impossible for aid to be distributed and the Syrian government has reduced the number of aid groups approved to work in the country to 29 from 110, Amos said, adding that aid convoys were also regularly attacked or shot at and staff intimidated or kidnapped.

Guterres said that since February, there have been 8,000 Syrians a day fleeing across the country's borders and at that rate the number of refugees was forecast to more than double by the end of the year to 3.5 million.