UN and Syrian Red Crescent delivering humanitarian aid to 40,000 displaced Syrians

The United Nations and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) are carrying out their largest ever humanitarian convoy to provide life-saving humanitarian assistance to more than 40,000 displaced people at the remote Rukban ‘makeshift’ settlement in south-eastern Syria, on the border with Jordan. The convoy arrived today, and the operation is expected to last approximately one week.

The joint UN and SARC inter-agency convoy consists of 118 trucks with humanitarian assistance and will deliver food, health and nutritional supplies, core relief items, WASH materials, education items and children’s recreational kits to people at the site, the vast majority of whom are vulnerable women and children. Vaccines for some 10,000 children under five-years-of-age will also be part of the convoy as a well as a needs assessments will be carried out.

“This large-scale delivery of essential humanitarian supplies to the extremely vulnerable in Rukban could not have happened a moment too soon. The humanitarian situation there has been deteriorating due to harsh winter conditions and the lack of access to basic assistance and services. There have been reports of at least eight young children’s deaths in recent weeks”, said the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator a.i. Mr. Sajjad Malik.

“While this delivery of assistance will provide much-needed support to people at Rukban, it is only a temporary measure. A long-term, safe, voluntary and dignified solution for tens of thousands of people, many of whom have been staying at the Rukban settlement for more than two years in desperate conditions, is urgently needed,” stressed Mr. Malik.

[UN]

This entry was posted in Humanitarian Aid, International Cooperation by Grant Montgomery.