The NGO Forum North West Syria represents a wide range of NGOs operating cross-border in Northern Syria.We spoke to their Advocacy Coordinator Mohannad Talas about the humanitarian impact if the UN cross-border resolution is not renewed
NEAR: What is the cross-border resolution?
Mohannad Talas: In 2014 the UN Security Council authorised cross-border and cross-line access for the UN and its partners to deliver humanitarian aid in Syria. This resolution has been renewed several times and will be up for discussion again next month. This time, however, there are concerns that the resolution extension could be hijacked by political interests.
NEAR: What would be the impact of a non-renewal of the resolution?
MT: The North West would experience a quick and catastrophic deterioration in the humanitarian situation, due to the high levels of aid dependency here. The current cross-border operation reaches almost 60% of the 4.1 million people in need of assistance each month. WFP, for example, provides around 80% of the food response in North West Syria, providing 1.4 million people with food baskets each month. These supplies will run out by September 2022 if the cross-border resolution is not renewed. There are already 3.1 million people suffering food insecurity in North West Syria and the knock-on impacts would be rapidly felt in education, health, child development and increased protection risks.
NEAR: What would this mean for locally led Syrian organisations?
MT: The resolution authorises the UN’s ability to financially support partners and programs in areas not controlled by the Government of Syria. If the resolution is not extended, the UN will not be able to bilaterally fund partners who are not registered with the Government of Syria, and the UN will have to close the Syria Cross-border Humanitarian Fund (SCHF). This will have an enormous impact on operations in the North West, particularly on local NGOs: at least 50% of local NGOs are almost completely dependent on UN funding. Currently, 65% of SCHF funding goes directly or indirectly to Syrian NGOs.
NEAR: How would this affect humanitarian assistance?
MT: The UN has played a vital role in procuring, pre-positioning, and transporting a large volume of core relief items across virtually every sector in northwest Syria. In the case of food and shelter, the UN procures an overwhelming proportion of the total assistance delivered to people in the northwest.
Many core items are available and procured within the region (mainly Turkey), but the UN agencies’ vital role in procurement provides stability and reliability in the humanitarian supply chain. NGOs rely heavily on the UN for its unique ability to procure pharmaceuticals and vaccines and provide key medicines that NGOs would not be able to procure bilaterally. UN agencies are also able to procure relief supplies tax-free because of their tax-exempt status. NGOs would unlikely benefit from such administrative and financial exemptions, nor would they likely benefit from the same economy of scale, so costs for supplies could increase significantly.
In addition to UN transshipments providing goods to humanitarian actors in the northwest, the cross-border resolution has allowed UN agencies to provide critical funding to support a host of essential services provided by cross-border actors including education, psychosocial support, and health services. UN funding has also facilitated the payment of teachers, doctors, and other essential workers providing critical services in the northwest.
NEAR: How would this impact the scale of the humanitarian response?
MT: The provision of emergency assistance in northwest Syria at the current scale is only possible through the pre-positioning of vast quantities of essential food and non-food items and a coordinated effort to transportthese items from Turkey to Syria on a daily basis.
NGOs would not be able to directly replace this assistance at the scale offered by the UN.
INGOs estimate they have capacity to scale up to meet the needs of 300,000 people, leaving roughly 1 million people without food assistance in northwest Syria after September. This may also be exacerbated by the impacts of the Ukraine crisis and global food security pipelines being put at risk.
70 hospitals, 186 repaired primary health centres, and 77 mobile clinics serve more than 4 million people in northwest Syria.19 Many of these facilities are already facing huge funding gaps. Supplies and support from UN agencies play an essential role in providing health care for local populations and IDPs
NEAR: What alternatives are you exploring, in the case that the resolution is not renewed?
MT: Members of the NW Syrian NGO Forum worry that public exploration of alternatives, at this point, would suggest to UN Security Council members that we can resolve this easily without the renewal of the resolution. And we do not want to give that impression. We need the resolution to be renewed, if people in NW Syria are to receive the services they need and deserve. We’re asking everyone, please, keep the focus there.