UN renews aid supplies to northwest Syria for another six months

The UN Security Council on Monday renewed for a further six months the cross-border mechanism that allows the delivery of humanitarian aid to the last rebel strongholds in northwestern Syria, on which some four million people depend. 

The decision went ahead with the support of all 15 members of the Council, including Russia, which has been highly critical of the system and has used its veto in recent years to curtail it. 

With the approval of this resolution, aid will be able to continue to flow from Turkey to the Syrian province of Idlib and parts of neighbouring Aleppo without passing through the hands of the Damascus government, which does not control these territories. 

The mechanism, which has been in place since 2014, was officially set to expire on 10 January, after the Security Council last July extended it for only six months, with an option for another half-year pending a new vote. 

It did so at the insistence of Russia, the great ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which in recent years has used its veto power to progressively reduce this system of assistance to opposition-controlled areas. 

The mechanism managed by the UN once had four access points for humanitarian convoys: two from Turkey, one from Iraq and one from Jordan. 

Currently, the only authorised crossing point is Bab al Hawa, which links the northwestern province of Idlib with Turkey, and Moscow has often said that it believes the best option would be for all humanitarian aid to be channelled from inside the country, which would make it dependent on the Syrian executive. 

However, according to the UN's own humanitarian services, cutting off supplies from Turkey would endanger the lives of millions of people, and Russia ultimately opted to support its continuation for another six months. 

Syria as a whole, at war since 2011, suffers from a severe economic crisis and a devastating humanitarian situation, but these are particularly alarming in the northwest of the country, where more than 4 million people are in need of aid and more than 2 million are entirely dependent on the cross-border instrument. 

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), of the 4.6 million people in the region, 3.3 million are food insecure and 2.9 million are internally displaced, 1.8 million of whom are living in camps in harsh conditions. 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement that the decision to extend aid comes at a time when humanitarian needs "have reached their highest levels since the start of the conflict in 2011".