Greg Mulholland – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Greg Mulholland on 2016-04-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent discussions he has had with international partners on aid access to Madaya in Syria.

Mr Tobias Ellwood

The UK is part of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG). The ISSG Humanitarian Task Force meets on a weekly basis to push for increased access across Syria, in line with relevant Security Council Resolutions. We have been pushing hard through these discussions for humanitarian access to be granted to all besieged and hard to reach places in Syria, including Madaya. As a result, humanitarian convoys have reached 11 besieged areas, including Madaya – several inter-agency convoys have reached a total of 150,000 people in besieged areas. This is out of a total of 487,000 people in besieged areas.

However, progress is too slow. More needs to be done to provide for all those in need in Syria. We are also deeply concerned by reports of civilian deaths in Madaya because their medical evacuations were blocked. We are pressing for an end to the removal of medical equipment from convoys by the regime, the evacuation of critical medical cases and regular access to healthcare for besieged populations.