The United Nations is sounding the alarm: Six million Syrians need urgent assistance

The United Nations Secretary-General’s envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, said that the Syrians are facing a worsening humanitarian and economic crisis inside and outside the country, while the Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffiths, confirmed that six million Syrians need urgent assistance this winter.

“The current situation in Syria is the result of more than a decade of war and conflict, corruption and mismanagement, the Lebanese financial crisis, the Corona virus, sanctions, and the repercussions of the war in Ukraine,” Pedersen said during his regular briefing to the UN Security Council in New York. The UN envoy stopped at the very difficult humanitarian situation, and drew attention to the severe shortage of fuel, including heating oil, and pointed to the lack of clean water and health care.

The UN official also referred to the closure of official departments for several days due to the lack of energy, as some civil servants cannot get to work due to the lack of fuel, and indicated that the aggravation of the crisis is manifested in Damascus through a number of things, including “dark streets and unlit houses, less traffic, and the depreciation of the Syrian pound to new records.”

For his part, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffiths, said, “The continuation of hostilities has taken a heavy toll, especially along the front lines, with at least 138 civilians killed and 249 injured between January and November in northwestern Syria alone.”

Griffiths stressed that the number of people in need of humanitarian aid “has risen to 14.6 million, an increase of 1.2 million compared to last year,” and is expected to “reach 15.3 million in 2023.” “We have not seen such figures since the beginning of the crisis in Syria in 2011,” he said.

He stressed that more than half of the Syrians in the country, more than 12 million, struggle to provide food, and warned that nearly three million Syrians could slip into “food insecurity.”

The UN official also stressed the continued deterioration of the social and economic conditions, and pointed to a number of factors that play a role in this, in addition to the conflict, including inflation, which is more evident in the continued depreciation of the local currency, at a time when food and fuel prices continue to rise globally, which puts basic foodstuffs and other necessities out of reach for millions of Syrian families.