Stuart C. McDonald – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stuart C. McDonald on 2016-07-18.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps the Government is taking to ensure that humanitarian assistance reaches children and families in besieged towns in Syria.

Rory Stewart

The UK is at the forefront of the humanitarian response to the Syria crisis. We have pledged over £2.3 billion, our largest ever response to a humanitarian crisis.

The UN estimates that, of 13.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria, 4.6 million are living in areas where humanitarian access is extremely restricted, including 592,700 people living under siege. It is unacceptable and illegal to use starvation as a weapon of war.

We are doing all we can to open up humanitarian access. We have supported the UN and international NGOs since the start of the conflict to deliver aid to UN-designated hard-to-reach and besieged areas. UK co-sponsored UN Security Council Resolutions have enabled over 300 convoys of aid to reach vulnerable people in hard-to-reach areas without the consent of the Syrian regime. We will continue to use our position in the UN Security Council and International Syria Support Group to push for unrestricted and unfettered humanitarian access, whilst maintaining the pressure for a political settlement to bring the suffering of the Syrian people to an end.