YouSaid · the spoken record

Cousin

lines on the record: 25
first: 2015-04-24
most recent: 2016-01-27
sittings or episodes: 2
sources: un-security-council

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Paulo Coelho has said that the world is changed by our example, not by our opinion. Our responsibility is to ensure that the decisions and choices made in this Chamber become reality on the ground. That is the only way we can save and protect people and enable Syria's next generation to heal.”
2016-01-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7612 (2016) · source
“Preventing a humanitarian crisis requires that humanitarian organizations have unimpeded and sustained access in order to deliver immediate relief, including food, to all those in need in Syria. Preventing a humanitarian crisis requires humanitarian pauses and unconditional, monitored ceasefires to enable food and other urgent assistance to be delivered to civilians and to support the necessary vaccination and other health campaigns. Preventing a humanitarian crisis - and a food nutrition security crisis - requires a halt to attacks on civilian infrastructure. Preventing a humanitarian crisis requires ensuring freedom of movement for all civilians and the immediate lifting of all sieges by all parties. That is the only way to end hunger and treat malnutrition, child by child, adult by adult, town by town.”
2016-01-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7612 (2016) · source
“The Council can rest assured that the World Food Programme and its partners will continue to do their utmost to overcome these barriers and hurdles and provide lifesaving assistance. We will continue with our steadfast efforts, exhausting every means at our disposal, reaching every child, woman and man in Syria where we can. Yet we cannot and do not perform alone. Of course, we work with others from the United Nations country teams and our 40 non-governmental organization partners. Let me be very clear: to prevent imminent starvation, we need the support and action of every Council member and every Member State. Preventing mass starvation requires more than a four-town agreement.”
2016-01-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7612 (2016) · source
“The physical and logistical challenges often pale in comparison to the numerous checkpoints our vehicles and staff must pass through, the presence of security forces in our warehouses, the burdensome administrative procedures surrounding the loading and sealing of our trucks and the lengthy bilateral negotiations necessary to get facilitation letters signed off on - not to mention the presence of radical armed groups such as ISIL. The time for fully and collectively implementing the Council's resolutions is long overdue. Access must not be arbitrary, ad hoc or one-time. Effective access must not require unreasonable approvals. It must be reasonably safe, regular, transparent and accountable.”
2016-01-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7612 (2016) · source
“The purchasing power of households has consequently dropped to alarming levels, with people's access to food limited as their financial wherewithal for buying food in the markets has been almost erased. In fact, a month's supply ofbasic food items costs some LSZ40,000, 10 times what it would be in Damascus. The truth is, the requirement in resolutions 2165 (2014) and 2139 (2014) that assistance not be impeded or hindered has yet to be fully realized. Despite some local successes, we do not have the access necessary to reach the hungry and those in need. The fact is, our persistent efforts to make gains in besieged and hard-to-reach areas are still thwarted by many obstacles.”
2016-01-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7612 (2016) · source
“ISIL maintains extremely tight control over these cities, with little prospects for negotiation. The Damascus highway, the primary road for taking supplies to Deir ez-Zor city, remains closed due to the ongoing conflict, which means that the airport is the only corridor through which to bring in commodities, including food from outside. The WFP has been authorized to airlift into Deir ez-Zor. However, owing to a combination of reasons - the extensive damage that has been done to the runway, a lack of air-space security for our planes and the inability of our staff and partners to distribute - we have been powerless to assist those in need in Deir ez-Zor. At the moment, small commercial airplanes carrying small quantities of food are able to land, but this situation has resulted in the highest price increases in the whole country.”
2016-01-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7612 (2016) · source
“We had recent breakthroughs just this month. They have enabled us to reach a mere 24 per cent of the besieged locations, with one-off support in Idlib governorate, where opposition groups have been blocking assistance to some 12,500 vulnerable Syrians. I should also note that half the besieged population - an estimated 200,000 people - are trapped inside Deir ez-Zor, which the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) took control of in July 2014. Deir ez-Zor has largely been inaccessible to humanitarian assistance since May of last year. ISIL currently controls most areas of the governorate, while the airport, along with five of the city's neighbourhoods, is under the control of the Syrian Government. It has been reported that ISIL targets the besieged locations on an almost daily basis, resulting in civilian fatalities and injuries.”
2016-01-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7612 (2016) · source
“What is most heartbreaking is that this location is a mere lS-minute drive from the WFP's Damascus office, and yet we cannot help. In Darayya city, where farming has stopped because of the heavy incidence of landmines, we have recorded similar sharp price increases. Most people consume just one meal a day. Together with the international community, the WFP has continued to appeal for access to these and other besieged and hard-to-reach locations. The Council heard from my colleague about the success, or lack of it, we have had with our inter-agency requests. To date, more than 60 per cent of the requests that the WFP has made have simply not received an answer. The meagre number of positive responses we did get were then tied up in bureaucratic procedures that resulted in zero access to these besieged areas throughout 2015.”
2016-01-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7612 (2016) · source
“In 2014, a reconciliation agreement was reached between the Government and armed groups that allowed the first inter-agency convoy to enter Moadamiyah in July of that year. After the agreement was reached, people were able to leave and enter the city through a single checkpoint, carrying small amounts of food for their daily needs. However, unfortunately, the checkpoint was closed in December 2015, and 44,000 people are now besieged inside the city. Directly after the siege was lifted, people rushed to the small shops to buy the food items that were available, and that accelerated the price increases. Many items, such as wheat flour, beans, pasta, lentils, oil and meat, are now available only in very limited quantities. Fruits are unavailable, in fact non-existent.”
2016-01-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7612 (2016) · source
“In many of them, people are running out, or may already have run out, of food. We simply do not know. It isjust a matter oftime before the brutal images we have witnessed these past few weeks hit our screens again. UNICEF and the Ministry of Health have been conducting assessments across the country, and severe cases of acute malnutrition are surfacing in horrendous numbers. More than half of these places have been besieged for a shocking three years. Some of their populations can be found in parts of rural Damascus where the WFP has not been able to provide food assistance for three years and where we know the price of food is more than double, and sometimes even triple, what it is in Damascus. Moadamiyah borders Damascus city and was one of the most contested locations at the beginning of the crisis.”
2016-01-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7612 (2016) · source
“Because the reality is more severe, the situation today is also more severe than when I addressed the Council 10 months ago. More than 4.6 million people, as my colleague noted, are trapped in besieged or hard- to-reach areas, and our food-security analysis suggests that 2.5 million are severely food-insecure inside these areas. Every day we receive alarming reports of a lack of food and water and of acute malnutrition and death. Food security requires not only food but also access to water, sanitation and essential medical treatment. Let us not allow populations in other locations to suffer the same fate as Madaya if they are not already suffering. As I am speaking to the Council now, we estimate that there are 18 besieged areas and close to half a million people cut off from food and other crucial humanitarian assistance.”
2016-01-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7612 (2016) · source
“Ms. Cousin: Mr. President, I wish to thank you for this opportunity. Ten months ago, in this very Chamber, I reported to the Council the World Food Programme's (WFP) grave concern at the deepening humanitarian crisis inside Syria (see S/PV.7433). I discussed the increasing hardship and deprivation facing people in besieged areas, leading not only to despair but also to malnutrition, starvation and death. I called for the Council's support for redoubling efforts enabling the entire international humanitarian system to access people in cut-off and hard-to-reach areas. Today I not only reiterate the call for help; I implore the Council for its assistance. The most powerful tool at the disposal of the United Nations for the prevention and protection of civilians - enshrined in international humanitarian law - is strong, qualitative consensus.”
2016-01-27 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7612 (2016) · source
“Without the support of the Council, there will be no food security and without food security there is no security. We can do better; we must do better.”
2015-04-24 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7433 (2015) · source
“To prevent the lack of access to food from becoming a political issue, the length and complexity of the crisis mean that we must increase - not reduce - financial investments in food and nutritional assistance. Until we deliver the political solutions that will create peace, we must fully implement the humanitarian solutions that will create hope and stability across the region. Failure to do so will haunt all of us for decades to come. We cannot ask parents to raise their children in a region without food - a region without peace. We cannot leave parents to pull their children out of school in order to search for food, work or protection from armed groups. We cannot expect parents to raise children in a region where picking up a gun is easier than picking up a book.”
2015-04-24 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7433 (2015) · source
“Without reliable access to food, people become easy targets for traffickers and extremists. Without reliable access to food, the region and its children are in danger. The conflict rages on without a political solution. Inside Syria, we ask all parties - the Government and the opposition groups, as well as the armed actors f to provide the necessary humanitarian access. And we ask for the Council's support because, despite important improvements in access facilitated by the Council and Member States, we must do more. We must maintain essential life-saving food access and nutrition programmes, and we must ensure that we meet the nutritional and educational needs of Syria's children.”
2015-04-24 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7433 (2015) · source
“A decrease in targeted donor funding forced us to reduce not only the number of people served but also the level of assistance we provide to those we serve. We will also reduce the number of people we serve in Egypt, Iraq and Turkey. Over the coming months, 400,000 refugees across the entire region will be completely cut from receiving food assistance. When we announced the reductions in Jordan, our hotlines were overwhelmed. Thousands of appeal calls come in each day - calls from families that have exhausted their resources and feel abandoned by all of us. One woman said, "I cannot stay ifI cannot feed my children". Families like hers consider once unthinkable options, such as returning to Syria or illegally trying to make the dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean into Europe.”
2015-04-24 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7433 (2015) · source
“We shift the burden from the international community to host communities and host Governments - communities like those in Jordan, where participation in the regional voucher programme, which provides choice to beneficiaries and cash to businesses in host communities, has been severely limited. Some 190,000 Syrian refugees living in extreme poverty received food assistance worth $28 per person per month. Because of funding shortfalls, we were forced to cut assistance by half for almost a quarter of a million more refugees living in absolute poverty. Now, they must try to feed their families on $14 per person per month, limiting their ability to purchase nutritious food. We also made cuts in Lebanon, where the refugee crisis has increased unemployment and overstretched national health, education and infrastructure services.”
2015-04-24 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7433 (2015) · source
“Funding shortfalls also limit plans such as those with UNICEF to reach pregnant and lactating women and to provide an integrated school feeding programme. Ifwe fail to provide the school meals that bring children back to school and keep them in school, we will miss the opportunity to teach them different lessons from those this conflict teaches, detrimentally impacting their futures and the future of the region. As the Council knows and as the High Commissioner highlighted, the Syrian refugee crisis threatens stability across the region. In the five neighbouring countries, particularly in Jordan and Lebanon, refugees now compete with their hosts for homes, employment, water and food. I must warn the Council that when we reduce food access operations, we reduce stability.”
2015-04-24 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7433 (2015) · source
“In fact, last month alone, we were able to reach an additional 528,000 people using the border crossings provided through resolution 2165 (2014). Expanding cross-border activities depends not only on our ability to safely cross but also on adequate financial resources. Our 2015 plan is to reach 4 million people inside Syria and 2.1 million more outside, but funding shortfalls are putting this already limited assistance in jeopardy. Current funding commitments do not reflect the humanitarian needs of this prolonged conflict. Because of funding shortfalls, as noted by the High Commissioner, we have been forced to cut the family food basket inside Syria by 30 per cent. Those cuts have a significant potential nutritional impact and can lead to protein energy malnutrition.”
2015-04-24 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7433 (2015) · source
“Despite our diligence, we did have one widely reported incident where a small amount of WFP food was stolen by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham and distributed with much publicity on social media. Inside Syria, negotiating humanitarian access for distribution and monitoring within besieged areas can involve up to 50 parties. Determining which routes to take, what times to go, the quantities to be delivered and even the land mines to avoid can take anything from 10 days to 10 months. Where we reach today, we too often cannot reach tomorrow. Parts of Idlib and Ar-Raqqa, once regularly accessible, are now unreachable. We have not reached Moadamiya in over a year. The Council enabled us to make regular cross-line and cross-border deliveries.”
2015-04-24 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7433 (2015) · source
“Some 6.8 million people require critical food assistance - more than half a million more than at this time last year. The decline in food security and the destruction and weakening of water and health services have created a serious nutritional crisis. Four million Syrian women and children require preventative and curative nutrition services. Families face and make impossible decisions to find and access food. Parents pull their children out of school to search for work.Food becomes part of negotiations to marry off young daughters or to release children to fight in armed groups. Gandhi said "to the mother ofa hungry child, a piece of bread is the face of God". Gandhi was right. We must not let that piece of bread be delivered by an armed extremist. We regularly monitor to ensure the appropriate distribution of WFP food.”
2015-04-24 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7433 (2015) · source
“People suffer and die from starvation and malnutrition or from stunted child development; those deprived of nutrition suffer the long-term consequences of deteriorating health and broad despair. Those inside Syria's highest-priority districts, with the highest concentration of displaced people, live without livelihoods, without an income and unable to meet their basic needs. Before the conflict began, Syria was a net food exporter, but drought and conflict have put food increasingly out of reach. Food is harder to produce and harder to import. Inside Syria, wheat is twice as expensive as it was before the crisis; rice is four times as expensive; bread prices are up 55 per cent. As a result, any food available is too often, for too many, inaccessible.”
2015-04-24 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7433 (2015) · source
“The man shouted back to me and the crowd that was now growing, "This is Jordanian bread, not Syrian bread". He shouted "This is not our bread. This is bad bread". I said, "Ask this man what his business was in Syria". He said, "I am a Syrian baker". The WFP Syrian response team is working across the region to appropriately meet the food and nutrition needs of the most vulnerable victims of the Syrian crisis. In the five host countries, we are working outside Syria to serve refugees in camps like Zaatari, as well as refugees hosted by community neighborhoods, and we are working inside Syria to serve the displaced in opposition, as well as in regime-held areas - the whole of Syria. As Council members well know, the longer this crisis continues the more vulnerable its victims become.”
2015-04-24 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7433 (2015) · source
“I met husbands who were angry because conflict had forced them to leave their farms, their livestock and their small businesses; angry because they could now feed their families only by standing in lines for food, water and bread. Because we recognized the importance of bread in the diets of Syrian families, we also began baking and distributing 130,000 pieces ofpita bread per day, in addition to our usual rations. As I walked through the camp, a man began following me and shouting at me in Arabic. I asked the translator to find out what the man was shouting. He began shouting louder and crumbling a piece of bread in his hand. The translator said, "He is angry about the bread. He asks if you would feed this terrible bread to your own children". I said, "Ask him what is wrong with the bread".”
2015-04-24 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7433 (2015) · source
“Ms. Cousin: I thank you for drawing the world's attention back to the victims of Syria's ongoing conflict. Since the beginning of this crisis, the World Food Programme (WFP) has worked to address the daily food and nutrition needs of four million people inside Syria and of 1.9 million people outside Syria. In 2012, I made my first visit to Jordan's Zaatari refugee camp. The WFP was working there with our partners at that time to provide hot meals to the newly arrived and monthly food rations to the then 17,000 Syrians who called the camp home. As I was walking through the camp, I met women who had walked for miles carrying small children in search of shelter, food and safety. I met children who had already been out of school for weeks or for months - and that was in 2012.”
2015-04-24 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.7433 (2015) · source