UN Aid Chief to Visit Turkey, Syria to Assess Quake Needs

After a fatal earthquake devastated the area this week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed for increased humanitarian aid access into northwest Syria from Turkey on Thursday, saying he would be "quite glad" if the organisation could use more than one border crossing to distribute relief.

The Syrian government sees Turkey's delivery of aid to the rebel-held northwest as an infringement on its territorial integrity and sovereignty. Since 2014, the UN has been granted permission by the UN Security Council to use a single crossing to reach millions of people in the region who are in need.

Speaking to reporters in New York, Guterres declared that the time had come to look into all options for getting personnel and aid to the earthquake-affected region. The earthquake, which occurred early on Monday morning and has already claimed at least 19,000 lives in Turkey and Syria, struck these countries.

According to Guterres, "several non-UN humanitarian organisations are currently supplying through other crossings." If it is possible to do so in as many crossings as possible in relation to the UN, I will be extremely glad.

Although Guterres did not directly state that he had requested that the Syrian government let humanitarian deliveries through additional border crossings, he did make reference to the 15-member UN Security Council's authority to do so.

We obviously need a lot of support, Guterres stated. Naturally, if the Security Council could agree to allow for more crossings to be used, I would be extremely glad.

This weekend, UN aid director Martin Griffiths will travel to Gaziantep in Turkey, Aleppo, and Damascus in Syria to examine needs and determine how the UN might increase assistance, according to Guterres. The UN's relief delivery into northwest Syria from Turkey was temporarily delayed by the earthquake, but it was restarted on Thursday.

Requests for response on Guterres' statements were not immediately answered by Bassam Sabbagh, Syria's UN ambassador.

For a long time, the Syrian administration has claimed that additional help can be sent directly to the front lines from within the nation. Bashar al-detractors Assad's worry that food and other supplies sent from within Syria would end up under regime control.

In contrast to the 43,500 people who have received help through Syrian routes each month since August 2021, UN aid from Turkey served 2.7 million people in northwest Syria each month last year.

A cross-border humanitarian mission into Syria was first approved by the UN Security Council in 2014 at four locations in Turkey, Iraq, and Jordan. Due to objections from Russia and China, who supported Assad's case for assistance delivery within Syria, it was reduced by 2020 to the single crossing that is currently in operation.