I thank Special Envoy Pedersen and Undersecretary Lowcock for their briefings on both the political and humanitarian situation in Syria.
Mr. President – I welcome the announcement of the Special Envoy on the upcoming next round of Constitutional Committee talks in Geneva. These meetings are an important step towards restoring trust between the Syrian authorities and its legitimate opposition.
I encourage the Special Envoy to explore additional measures to rebuild confidence between the parties. In this regard, the release of arbitrarily detained people, especially women and children, remains an imperative. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights – more than 1800 people were arbitrarily arrested in Syria 2020.
We remain cautiously optimistic on the ceasefire agreement in the Northwest of Syria. As we heard, the truce largely holds, but violence prevails in many places across the country, putting in danger the most vulnerable. We must admit that the war is far from over – confrontations continue, including deadly attacks by extremist groups.
On the backdrop of on-going conflict, millions of people have forced to leave their homes. According to OCHA, 1.5 million Syrians live in IDP camps across Syria. Ahead of winter, it is crucial that humanitarian workers have access to all of these locations, the number of which is in thousands. Estonia calls the Syrian authorities and other parties to the conflict to ensure unimpeded humanitarian access to all people in need.
We are now one year into the first reduction of cross-border aid to Syria after Russian and Chinese double vetoes at the end of 2019. This decision of the Security Council seriously damaged our capacity to support Syrian civilians. The promises of replacing cross-border deliveries with cross-line aid have fallen short in their substance.
Mr. President – we remind the Syrian government and its allies that the European Union will not support Syria’s reconstruction and lift any sanctions until a genuine political process is firmly underway.
Resolution 2254, Secretary General’s guidelines, and the document on humanitarian aid “Principles and Parameters” remain at the core of sending aid to Syria. Only this way, we can ensure that humanitarian aid will not be instrumentalized to reassert unjust policies on Syrian people.