IPU calls for urgent humanitarian access to desperate populations in Syria

Palestinian children take part in a rally in Gaza City to show solidarity with Palestinian refugees in Syria's main refugee camp Yarmouk. ©REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) is calling on the international community including its Members to put renewed and sustained pressure on all parties involved in the Syrian conflict to allow the immediate and unhampered access to civilian and refugee populations in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.

The recent deaths of starving Palestinian refugees in the Yarmouk camp on the edge of Damascus are the latest civilian casualties of a conflict that has left whole communities besieged and cut off from any assistance. An estimated 250,000 people are beyond the reach of aid, according to the United Nations (UN).

The UN estimates 9.3 million Syrians in the country and two million outside are in urgent need of aid. Humanitarian agencies are currently feeding more than 3.8 million people in Syria but many populations cannot be reached because of the intricate dynamics of the conflict.

In the run-up to the Syria peace talks next week in Switzerland that would bring the sides together for the first time since the conflict started three years ago,
IPU is urging the international community to multiply its efforts to end the war through a negotiated political settlement and to find an immediate and effective solution to the humanitarian crisis.

“The issue of immediate access to humanitarian relief should be a priority in next week’s peace talks. Hundreds of thousands of people inside Syria have been abandoned to their fate, trapped in the crossfire of the conflict. They cannot wait until a political solution is found for the assistance they desperately need right now,” says IPU President Abdelwahad Radi.

IPU has repeatedly called on its Members to bring pressure to bear on their governments to provide whatever financial and material support they can to the civilian population in Syria and to Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries. Following a mission to Jordan in June 2012, IPU appealed to its Members for aid for the refugees and to the countries that host them.

A resolution adopted at its 128th Assembly in March 2013 also urged all parties in Syria to put an end to all forms of violence immediately and expressed deep concern over the impact of the conflict on civilians in general and on women, children, the elderly and the disabled in particular.