Since December 2016, the family that lost its main bread winner seven years ago has been living in relative calm close to the Turkish border. A vote to renew it is set for Thursday in New York.Īid agencies warn that if Russia vetoes the resolution, food would be depleted in Idlib and surrounding areas by September, putting the lives of some 4.1 million people, many of them displaced by the conflict and living in tent settlements, at risk.Īfesh, 37, who was displaced from the northern city of Aleppo in 2016, said her main concern before moving to Idlib province used to be where to hide with her four sons and three daughters from government airstrikes. That one-year mandate was extended and expires this weekend. Days later, the council authorized the delivery of aid through just one of those crossings, Bab al-Hawa. In early July 2020, China and Russia vetoed a UN resolution that would have maintained two border crossing points from Turkey to deliver humanitarian aid to Idlib. It kept one in the north, the Bab al-Hawa crossing with Turkey, for aid to flow into the opposition stronghold destroyed by 11 years of war. Since then, UN Security Council permanent member Russia forced the council to close three of the four crossings. In 2014, aid flowed into Syria from four border crossings. Opposition activists and residents warn that is something the authorities in Damascus would exploit as a pressure tactic against Syria’s main opposition stronghold of Idlib. Russia, a main backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has long wanted to shut down the Turkey route, seeking to have aid delivered solely through government-controlled areas. Soon, she says, "we might have to fight in order to get a bite of food." The jobless woman says the family survives on two meals a day, mostly made up of rice or bulgur.
Death by hunger," she said on a recent day in the tent she lives in with her family, her cat deep asleep in her lap as her children played nearby. "If, God forbid, aid is stopped, it means that they have sentenced us to death. Such a move would mean Afesh and her seven children - along with 4 million others in Idlib - will have to survive on even less. Now, she fears Russia - perhaps seeking to retaliate against Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine - will block the renewal of a UN Security Council resolution that allows aid to be delivered from Turkey to Syrians who, like her family, live in the opposition-run Idlib province. Over the past two years, Adila Afesh has seen the food assistance her Syrian family receives shrink by nearly two-thirds.
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