As the United Nations announced this week that warring parties would convene for Syria peace talks on Monday, Save the Children organization has reminded the world of its obligation to save the future of Syrian boys and girls who have been subjected to untold sufferings in the five-year-old conflict.
The peace talks beginning in Geneva take place amid an uneasy halt in fighting since February 27. The temporary suspension of indiscriminate attacks has allowed humanitarian supplies for besieged communities that have barely survived months of isolation and encirclement by hostile warring parties. In many cases, besieged people have survived by eating grass.
Special Envoy for Syria says the ‘substantive’ UN-mediated peace talks will begin next Monday. According to Staffan de Mistura the substantive discussions, known as the intra-Syrian talks on 14 March, in a round that will likely end by the 24th. The negotiations are to be preceded by proximity talks.
“We believe that having a timetable and a time limit is healthy for everyone,” the Special Envoy noted, according to a UN report.
“When we start having the talks on Monday, the focus will be on substance, on the agendas, in other words on new governance, constitution, and elections, the future elections in 18 months’ time, both presidential and parliamentarian.”
The UN and its partners have delivered aid to 238,485 people via 536 trucks.
Mistura’s Special Advisor, Jan Egeland, says ten areas have been reached by UN and partners, several with multiple convoys. “UNRWA [UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East]has had progress reaching people in Yarmouk, and WFP [World Food Programme] has been systematically working to overcome all of the obstacles to be able to do airdrops to Deir ez-Zor.”
However, Egeland added that six “important” besieged areas – including Darayya and Douma – remain unreached as permits and security guarantees have not yet been obtained.
Meanwhile, in a report titled “Syria’s Children of War,” Save the Children has said childhood has been the biggest victim of the conflict, with 7.5 million children affected.
Inside Syria, the United Nations estimates there are 6.5 million displaced people in besieged or hard-to-reach areas. “Many live in dire need in abandoned buildings, open spaces and in informal camps mainly in the north near the border with Turkey, where there are few or no services available. Many Syrian refugees have joined the exodus of refugees to Europe. Currently, more than 4.7 registered Syrian refugees have fled the violence in their home country.
“Those who remain in the Middle East face bleak conditions, lack of access to critical services and the right to work. Some families are resorting to such negative coping strategies as eating less, marrying off girl children and sending children to work in exploitative labor.”
In the words of a Syrian aid worker, “there are snipers shooting at anyone on the road, and landmines in the fields. Checkpoints stop everything coming in – food, medicine, fuel; everything needed for life. They stop people leaving, even sick children in need of medical help. Homes and schools lie in ruins from bombing. Children are starving and the markets are empty. It’s the 21st century but here it’s like hundreds of years ago. This is what it means to live under siege.”
The report says siege of civilian areas has been a tactic since the very beginning of the war.
“In early 2011, protests began in Dara’a and the government closed off the town, shutting down electricity and cutting supplies of water and food for 11 days. Since then sieges have become increasingly systematic and commonplace. Some areas, such as Darayya and parts of Eastern Ghouta, have been under constant siege since 2012, with children and their families struggling to survive in a chronic crisis. Other areas have seen sieges tighten for months at a time, plunging them into a state of heightened emergency and starvation.
“In January 2016 horrific images of children starving to death in the besieged town of Madaya momentarily grabbed the world’s attention. However, away from the cameras many more communities face similar hardship and desperation. A few days after Madaya hit global news, a sick newborn in another besieged town died when his mother was stopped from crossing a checkpoint to seek urgent medical help.16 This was just one of many incidents in besieged areas that are barely reported. Most people with the means have fled and those remaining are the most vulnerable of all, with children often most at risk. Analysis of 560 deaths in besieged areas by the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) found that 46.61% of the casualties were children under 14 years old.17 Many of these deaths were from preventable causes, including accidentally ingesting poison while scavenging for food; lack of emergency medical care.”
Save the Children recommends a series of immediate steps including stopping the use of sieges as a tactic, ensuring sustained safe passage for humanitarian agencies to deliver aid to populations in need, including the delivery of food, medical and heating supplies for emergency and life-saving operations, prioritizing delivery of childhood vaccines, therapeutic food and nutrients for children and other child focused aid, given their increased vulnerability in siege situations and allowing free movement of civilians; and, in accordance with humanitarian standards, immediately facilitating the medical evacuation of those needing life-saving treatment.
The multi-layered conflict in Syria has involved a genocidal indiscriminate and brutal violence against civilians. The sieges and denial of aid has forced half of the population to escape to other places, with 6.6 million people displaced inside Syria and another 4.7 million refugees on foreign soils in the Middle East and Europe. An untold number has perished at sea while fleeing to greener pastures of Europe via Greek generosity and its “warehouse of souls.”
Save the Children estimates that between 250,00013 and 470,00014 people have been killed. “The crisis has deteriorated even further over the past year, with the active involvement of the Russian military the latest in a seemingly never-ending spiral of military escalations. At least 14 nations, including four of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, are now militarily engaged in Syria.”
The terrorizing suffering that Syrians have gone through at the hands of Bashar al Assad, ISIS, Hebollah, and on account of apathy of the international community, coupled with regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, will remain a blot on collective conscience for years to come. But the world powers, regional countries and Syrians can do one thing – they can help create conditions that pull Syrian children out of the nightmarish existence and brighten prospects for their future.
The peace talks must set upon immediately stopping hostilities and releasing political prisoners, chart out a roadmap for a political resolution that respects the country’s demographic complexion and fosters harmony between religious groups. The United States and Russia, being leaders of the international group on Syria, should fight the ISIS terror and must also get rid of the regime that has been responsible for hundreds of thousands deaths. A convergence of international interests for peace has to be the first template on the rough road to a viable political settlement of the Syrian conflict – for the sake of future of Syria.
