YouSaid · the spoken record

Susannah Sirkin

lines on the record
12
first
2020-06-29
most recent
2020-06-29
sittings or episodes
1
sources
un-security-council

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  1. “We and our colleagues working to protect health across the globe implore Council members to do what is right, namely, to support a nation-wide ceasefire, which is so urgent during the COVID-19 pandemic; to unite in their resolve to ensure that aid reaches civilians in need, wherever they may be; and to come together with a view to achieving a sustainable peace through meaningful accountability in Syria. Anything less will only further stain the record of the Security Council.”

    2020-06-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/635 (2020) · source

  2. “The need for effective and principled humanitarian aid cannot be overstated. But more than anything else, Syrian civilians and health workers need a sustained reprieve from violence. The Security Council must not spare any effort to sustain and expand the existing ceasefire. At this historic juncture, when we are all assessing our own countries’ vulnerabilities and glaring inequities, it is critical for the Security Council to place humanity before political wrangling and posturing. The Council must not bargain with the lives and the health of Syrians.”

    2020-06-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/635 (2020) · source

  3. ““All we can do is pray for our patients”, a doctor from a town in western Aleppo recently told us. The Council knows it can and should do more — more to support these health workers, more to put critical resources into their hands and a lot more to prepare them to confront one of the biggest threats to public health the world has seen in a 100 years. In this context, we call on the Security Council to enable humanitarian assistance through all available channels and to renew the cross-border aid resolution to secure access to life-saving aid for the 4 million Syrians in need. We and our many fellow non-governmental organizations are calling on the Council to renew the mechanism for a minimum of 12 months, and to re-authorize the Al-Yarubiyah crossing point that was removed by the Council in January.”

    2020-06-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/635 (2020) · source

  4. “They have warned us — as they have warned the Security Council — of the impending collapse of their frail health-care system and of the hundreds of thousands of lives hanging in the balance. These doctors, nurses and paramedics have sacrificed years of their lives under the threat of bombs and bullets, enduring unconscionable persecution and unfathomable loss, in order to save as many lives as they can. As one Syrian doctor told us, “We have died 1,000 times over — from chemical attacks and barrel bombs and rockets and hunger and torture and freezing weather.” Now, nine years into a brutally executed conflict, physically and psychologically exhausted and lacking the most basic of resources to protect themselves and tend to their patients, they are faced with one of their biggest challenges yet.”

    2020-06-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/635 (2020) · source

  5. “According to non-governmental organizations in the north-east, 11 health facilities are at imminent risk of closure or severe disruption to their services, while another 86 facilities are facing shortages of essential health kits that were usually supplied by the United Nations via the Al-Yarubiyah crossing. Cross-line aid has clearly not compensated for the loss of the channel, despite recent improvements. For the Council to expect a Government responsible for igniting and perpetuating one of the worst humanitarian crises of our time to turn around and facilitate access to aid in good faith is an exercise in self-delusion. Our partners in Syria have warned us about the lack of resources they face and the impossibility of effectively enacting mitigation measures in overflowing border camps and overpopulated towns.”

    2020-06-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/635 (2020) · source

  6. “Overcrowding, malnutrition and persistent gaps in water, sanitation, qualified medical personnel and essential medical resources — from oxygen to personal protective equipment — all make it very likely that the virus will spread like wildfire through the north-west of the country. According to MedGlobal, and as a result of displacement and attacks on health care in north-west Syria, there is an average of only 0.14 doctors per 1,000 people, as compared to 1.3 per 1,000 in the rest of the country. The situation in the north-east is also critical. The shortages in medical equipment and supplies in an area hosting 2 million people are truly shocking. The gaps have grown more severe since the Council removed the Al-Yarubiyah crossing point, which funnelled critical health aid from Iraq into the north-east.”

    2020-06-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/635 (2020) · source

  7. “But after years of conflict, the Syrian population is more exposed than most to the impacts of COVID-19. In north-west and north-east Syria, where meeting the most basic health needs is a daunting task, the spread of COVID-19 would be catastrophic. While reported cases remain low, it is only a matter of time before the coronavirus finds its way into the internally displaced persons camps and dense population centres of these regions. Despite record-level cross-border aid deliveries into north-west Syria, the humanitarian needs remain overwhelming, and the health system is nowhere near strong enough nor sufficiently supported to effectively respond to a serious outbreak of COVID-19.”

    2020-06-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/635 (2020) · source

  8. “It will continue to be a blight on the Security Council’s standing that it repeatedly failed to refer the crimes of the Syrian conflict to the International Criminal Court, the essential institution of last resort when accountability for the gravest crimes known to humankind is glaringly absent. But while the road to justice may be long, we know that more avenues to criminal accountability will arise. As we speak, documentation of grave violations is being used in national courts with universal jurisdiction to build more legal cases and give hope to survivors. During the past four months, we have seen our world upended by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The pandemic has put even the most well-equipped health systems to the test and exacted an unprecedented toll, sparing no country.”

    2020-06-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/635 (2020) · source

  9. “With widespread impunity, we fear that number will continue to rise given the fragility of the current ceasefire and the recent spike in hostilities in northern Hama and southern Idlib. Much has changed in our world in the past year. But the core behaviour of the parties to the conflict has not. The Governments of Syria and Russia, both represented at today’s Council meeting, have cynically continued to flout international laws and norms for military advantage. Impunity has thrived where diplomacy has failed. Meaningful accountability for the long list of crimes committed has been practically non-existent.”

    2020-06-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/635 (2020) · source

  10. “No health system in the world has suffered more violent and systematic targeting than Syria’s. And when you kill a doctor, you attack her patients. When you bomb a health clinic, you terrorize a community. In our analysis, that has been part of the strategy of the Syrian Government — to break the spirit of Syrians who oppose the brutal regime by crushing their health care. Since the beginning of the conflict, in 2011, the Syrian Government and its allies, including the Russian Federation in the later years, have done just that, again and again. Physicians for Human Rights has verified 595 individual attacks on more than 350 facilities over the span of those nine terrible years. Taken together, those attacks constitute crimes against humanity. It is a bleak, distressing tally that challenges the duties of the Council.”

    2020-06-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/635 (2020) · source

  11. “We have been rigorously documenting and reporting on violations of international humanitarian law in Syria for the past nine years. It has been just under one year since I last briefed the Council about attacks on health workers and facilities in Syria and the devastating impacts of those crimes on the health and lives of people there (see S/PV.8589). Today’s humanitarian crisis in Syria is inextricably linked to the Syrian Government’s behaviour over the course of the conflict. While all parties to the conflict have committed violations, the Government’s deliberate destruction of health facilities, its criminalization of health care, its targeting of health professionals and its forced displacement of millions of women, men and children have no parallel.”

    2020-06-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/635 (2020) · source

  12. “I thank you, Sir, for the opportunity to provide this briefing to the Council on the humanitarian crisis in Syria. It is a historic moment for the Council’s work, as it faces a global pandemic and hears the growing calls for a future of international peace and security built on respect for human rights, equality and justice for all. It is that spirit that created the United Nations, and this organ, after the Second World War. The biggest pandemic since the Organization’s founding presents an urgent call to conscience for the Security Council. My name is Susannah Sirkin and I am Director of Policy at Physicians for Human Rights — an international non-governmental organization that brings the expertise of science and medicine to the defence of human rights.”

    2020-06-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/635 (2020) · source