Transcript of press briefing by Jan Egeland, Special Advisor to the Special Envoy for Syria, after Humanitarian Access Task Force meeting
JE: Thank you very much, we just finished a meeting of the Humanitarian Task Force of International Syria Support Group. We laid out a number of very worrying trends in Syria and especially bad things that keep affecting the civilian population in this war that has lasted longer than the second world war and is continuing in too many places in Syria. First, the Task Force was created, among other things, to provide access to besieged and hard to reach areas. We have not had a 40-day period before without access by land to any besieged area and it happened today. The last time we reached a besieged area by land interagency convoy was the 2nd of May to Douma, we haven't been able to reach any of the remaining, nearly a dozen of besieged areas where there are still more than 600,000 people. This could change this weekend because yet again we are trying. A convoy is scheduled to go today to Homs and Hama, which are hard-to-reach areas, and this weekend to besieged areas in Eastern Ghouta. It is unacceptable that we do have trucks ready, courageous humanitarian workers eager to go even in great danger often, warehouses full and civilians in need and then bureaucratic impediments, lack of permits, infighting among armed groups, no clearance from the government, leaves us unable to reach women and children and others in great need.
We are continuously working outside of besieged areas to reach areas in great need. Courageous humanitarian workers have been now traveling for days this week to open a new corridor from Aleppo in the west to Qamishli in the east, going through northern Syria and we are hopeful that we will be able to reach that place very soon now, within hours hopefully and that would mean that a very expensive air bridge to Qamishli in the north-east of Syria can be substituted by the only sensible thing which is road convoys.
Let me mention also three very concerning developments in three regions of Syria connected actually to war. Number one, tens of thousands of civilians are now trapped inside of Raqqa city. A tremendous battle is being waged, the attacking forces are closing in on Raqqa city, there is intense bombardment from the air and it's very hard for the civilians to get of Raqqa. There are reports that air attacks cause civilian casualties and that it has made it hard for civilians to flee, as certainly the ruthless ISIL fighters are making it very hard for civilians to leave the area, it could not be worse inside Raqqa city than it is today. Equally bad in the southern city of Daraa, we had an appeal from the Daraa provincial council with a talk about intensive bombardment of Daraa city, including the use of barrel bombs and they say that it destroys hospitals and degrades infrastructure and the statement calls for international assistance to Daraa city. We are reaching Daraa governorate by cross border assistance, it is very hard to reach a city like Daraa in that kind of urban warfare.
In Deir ez-Zor governorate, which is held by the Islamic State fighters except for Deir ez-Zor city which is besieged by them and where we reach the population by air drops, in the governorate and the countryside there is a very dangerous polio outbreak. This is a particular virus called VDP. It is extremely rare and I am informed by our good WHO doctors that it can only occur when population immunity is very low and thereby left susceptible to the polio virus. We are trying to reach all parts of Deir ez-Zor, which means also using local medical authorities that still exist there with vaccines but certainly a polio outbreak is a sign to the world, to the Syrians, to everybody that this war has lasted too long, the population is really too weak and it's been too difficult to do the immunization campaigns needed to avoid epidemic disease.
Then, let me end by mentioning a humanitarian funding update. Of course appeals for Syria are the largest ever that I can record in the history of humanitarian work for a country. All together $8 billion is the appeal for 2017 for inside Syria, as well as for the region and such, including the refugees. We have received 21% of the 3.4 billion requested for the Syria Humanitarian Response Plan. 23% of the 4.6 billion Regional Refugee and Resilience plan, all together 22% of the $8 billion received, so the message is: hand the money pledged - to the donors, and register to whom the money is given which makes it possible for us to do our work.
Q: Good morning Mr. Egeland, if you could elaborate a little bit on the polio outbreak, my understanding was that they were trying to vaccinate about 100,000 children. What was discussed in the Task Force this week and last week on this issue and concretely what is being done to reach these children with this debilitating risk?
JE: So vaccines are being prepared to be trucked to Deir ez-Zor and distributed through an immunization campaign in Deir ez-Zor. We hope and pray that it will take place. The city of Deir ez-Zor has been reached, there was also immunization efforts twice in the first half of the year but this is Deir ez-Zor, it has been under the control of ISIL, it has been very, very hard. Polio can easily spread, polio is a horrific disease we are very afraid, we are doing also a preparedness under the aegis of the World Health Organization and partners, there is a preparedness campaign in neighboring countries in the region, there is a whole response plan.
Q (follow up): If you could elaborate a little bit, so you are getting the supplies through networks that have the ability to go through the ISIL areas and reach the people, is that correct or not?
JE: As far as I understand it, is one of the remarkable things of this world that in all corners of Syria that have at times, not often enough and not to all, but at times we've been able to reach people all over Syria including in Deir ez-Zor and in Raqqa governorate and other efforts will be done now, but as I just explained, you know there wouldn't be this outbreak with this virus if it wasn't a very low immunity level in a war-torn and war-tired population.
Q: I would like to know if the UN would like or is making some pressure on Turkey to open its border north to Raqqa to help the UN to send help to the people fleeing Raqqa.
JE: There is a continuing cooperation and dialogue with Turkey on the cross-border access, I was just informed that UN cross-border convoys have been unaffected by all of the offensives in northern Syria of late, so hundreds and hundreds of convoys have crossed from Turkey as well as from Jordan actually, and we are in general keen on seeing more border crossings opened because this is a large area that has to be covered and cross border is often the quickest and easiest way to reach more people. However, we can also do more from inside now, very interestingly we seem to be able to go for the first time from Aleppo to Qamishli across northern Syria from west to east.
Q: The Commission of Inquiry presented their oral update to the Human Rights Council and there was mention that there had only been one UN aid convoy this year and it wasn't clear what they meant. To besieged areas or hard-to-reach areas? Maybe you could just tell me how many there have been?
JE: It has been, let us also distribute this (UNOCHA interagency operations humanitarian update) if we haven't yet. It basically says how many convoys, where and when. No, there are dozens and dozens of convoys to hard-to-reach areas and even numerous convoys to besieged areas this year, although it's often half of what it should have been.
Our standard is that we should go to all of the besieged areas and all of the hard-to-reach areas every single month. There is the capacity to do that, we have enough trucks, we have enough supplies, we have enough humanitarian workers. It's very uneven when and where we can go but there are certainly lots of convoys. In March for example we had a relatively high number of convoys, for example. I should also say that it's a very fluid arena now, more things happen per month now than per year earlier in terms of shifting front lines. There were some ten local agreements, some of them good, some of them bad, some good elements, often bad elements where, you know, besieged areas virtually become not-besieged because armed fighters leave with families. We have criticized many of those agreements because that doesn't seem adequate protection standards for civilians, but it has led to access Al-Waer which I frequently talked about during the previous press conferences, we could go to it with an assessment mission and what we could see was that humanitarian aid and commercial traffic is now flowing freely into Al-Waer and there are 17,500 people there ,and there was a local agreement that led to this.
Q: I am sorry but do you have an estimate of the number of cases of polio and outbreak, and then you also mentioned the phrase that you used was “it could have been worse” in Raqqa. What do you know about the use of white phosphorous by the forces that are participating in the military onslaught in that area? Thank you.
JE: On the number of cases, the strain has been isolated from two cases. There was an onset of paralysis, this happened in March and in May, and it has also been isolated from a healthy child in the same community in Deir ez-Zor. And as of 6 June, 58 acute flaccid paralysis cases have been reported in Deir ez-Zor in 2017, so 58 cases and then they have isolated the strain and that's why you can confirm that this is a rare bad virus.
On white phosphorus, I do not have confirmed information on the use of it, but I have one general comment. White phosphorous and weapons like that do not belong if they are used in heavily populated urban areas. That kind of incendiary weapon, just like the kind of explosive weapons that have been used in many places, do not belong, you know, in streets with families, women, children, wounded, elderly, handicapped, etc. And all of those fighters need to be much more vigilant in terms of international humanitarian law and if you think you are fighting terrorists, it doesn't mean that the standards of humanitarian law in any way should be derogated from. The law is there, protecting civilians from attack wherever you are and wherever you fight.
Q: (follow up) going back to polio, you said that there were 58 acute flaccid paralysis cases. Who is conducting the lab test on that, I mean how are you getting that information?
JE: We are engaging in an area where neither you nor I are experts, but what I said is that this information we have from the WHO, who work through contacts which are usually local health authorities that still exist and still work. It seems that they have been able to isolate the strain in these three cases and then we have reports of another 58 cases having that disease and they have also done other cases that tested negative etc. So it's an ongoing effort in the midst of a war in an area that is under control of the Islamic State, but where a big offensive is apparently waiting so this is certainly an appeal to everyone fighting there, be aware of this polio breakout and be aware of the efforts of the World Health Organization and others to contain it. Polio knows no borders and could easily spread to other war-torn and war-tired populations.
Q: I need a clarification, you said 40 days without land access but were these people reached by cross-border convoys? And you said dozens of convoys this year, but on this paper it says 18. Is this just the convoys within the country and they are an extra dozens of convoys cross-border?
JE: I am glad you are asking, we distinguish from land access and air drops. So the city of Deir ez-Zor is besieged by Islamic State fighters, we have been able to reach it continuously now for more than a year with airdrops from great height for the first time in the history of humanitarian work that we've had sustained airdrops from that height to such an area. The land access to besieged areas has been denied, most of these areas have been by government forces and their allies, but there was also two,- Fu'ah and Kafraya, who are besieged by armed opposition groups and we have not been able to reach any of those since the beginning of May. Apart from that there is a massive operation to reach war-affected populations across the line, cross-border and within the areas controlled by the government and by the armed opposition groups to millions of Syrians and that's the ongoing operation. That big operation can also easily reach the 600,000 in besieged areas, but we’re denied access to those.
Q:Just a quick clarification for the convoy going from Aleppo to Qamishli, you said it is going to start moving within one hour or to arrive within one hour?
JE: What I understand is that they have been on the road for days. I hope they would be soon arriving in Qamishli and really hats off to our courageous colleagues who were on the road last night when we were in beds in Geneva and elsewhere and we hope that they will arrive now very soon. Of course they visited places on the way, it is not a big convoy, it is a small convoy and it is a reconnaissance convoy.
Q: In the lead up to the Astana Talks, which have been delayed, I understand there are preliminary talks going on in Moscow. What are your hopes about discussions to establish the perimeters of these de-escalation zones? What sort of promises does that hold for humanitarian aid?
JE: A number of hopes, really. Number one, that the de-escalation reaches a place like Dara’a which is supposed to be a de-escalation zone but rather has been an area of increased fighting. But it is very important that we recognize that in Idlib, Eastern Ghouta, there was horrific war before the agreement in Astana, now there is less. Clearly there has been a de-escalation de facto already in those two areas which makes it in a way sad that this window of opportunity, which is less fighting, has not been used to have more access, so that is my second one that the de-escalation zones within which 2.5 million or more people live according to the plans, that they will indeed become not only de-escalation zones but humanitarian free, humanitarian access zones. That's what we hope for and that's what the Astana memorandum says. At the moment they are trying, these three Astana partners, the Russian Federation Iran and Turkey, to agree on the exact delimitation of the zones. We have been invited to observe the meeting. We would certainly use any opportunity to tell them, the three, that we need free, unimpeded access and we certainly do not need a more bureaucratic system, we need an end to this red tape system that is keeping us away from many populations actually also in these areas. So I am very hopeful still and we hope for white smoke from Moscow and Astana again soon.
Geneva, 15 June 2017