UN’s mission impossible in Syria

The United Nations is faced with a mission impossible in Syria. The international body is faced with an uphill task of alleviating human suffering manifested by streams of refugees seeking safe havens in neighboring countries and a spate of internally displaced persons.
Despite war drums beating louder, the international community is paying only marginal attention to the plight of refugees and internally displaced persons — underscoring the cynics’ view that there is always money to fund armed conflicts and often little to handle humanitarian calamities.
Precisely this has prompted the UN humanitarian agencies to draw attention to human suffering. The United Nations refugee agency announced on Sept. 3 that an estimated 5,000 desperate Syrians are fleeing their homes every day and that the spiraling violence in the country has now created more than two million refugees, adding that there is no sign the “humanitarian calamity” will end anytime soon.
“The war is now well into its third year and Syria is hemorrhaging women, children and men who cross borders often with little more than the clothes on their backs,” the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement released to mark the milestone. “This trend is nothing less than alarming, representing a jump of almost 1.8 million people in 12 months.”
One year ago, the number of Syrians registered as refugees or awaiting registration stood at about 230,670 people, the statement said.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said Syria had become “a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history.” He added that “the only solace is the humanity shown by the neighboring countries in welcoming and saving the lives of so many refugees” as figures clearly show.
More than 97 per cent of Syria’s refugees are hosted by countries in the immediate surrounding region. By end of August 2013, the number of Syrians registered as refugees or pending registration was 110,000 in Egypt, 168,000 in Iraq, 515,000 in Jordan, 716,000 in Lebanon and 460,000 in Turkey. Over half of them are children under 17 years of age, the UNHCR said.
With the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) increasing, the World Food Program (WFP) appealed on Sept. 3 for humanitarian access inside Syria to avoid a situation in which hunger becomes an additional factor pushing more people to flee the country. It pointed out that because of the deteriorating security situation, in August 2013, WFP was only able to dispatch food for 2.4 million people — short of its goal of feeding three million people a month.
Meanwhile, the UN Children’s Fund announced that it is supporting a major push to ensure that crisis-affected children in Syria could keep learning. Together with the Ministry of Education and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), UNICEF will in September 2013 launch a home-based self-learning program that will enable over 400,000 children in conflict areas to continue following the national curriculum.

• The article was written for InDepthNews