In a dramatic exclusive, Foreign Policy magazine has revealed that the United Nations knew about mass starvation in Syria for months before providing humanitarian aid this month, under international pressure.
In a devastating exposé, the investigative journalist Roy Gutman disclosed that as far back as October, 2015, relief workers knew that residents of the besieged town of Madaya were in extreme deprivation. “Locals in the town had been raising alarms about the dire humanitarian situation there,” he writes. “At least six children and 17 adults starved to death in December, and hundreds more risked starvation.”
U.N. officials were aware all along, he claims, but “remained silent” until “shocking images of starving infants started circulating and news media sounded the alarm.”
The UN made known its awareness of the situation only in an unpublished internal memo called a “Flash Update” that was issued on Jan. 6 by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and marked “Internal, Not for Quotation.”
There, speaking of “desperate conditions,” including “severe malnutrition UN rapporteurs said there existed an “urgent need” to resolve some 1,000 cases of malnutrition in children under the age of 1, it surveyed in October.
Yacoub el-Hillo, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for Syria, addressed reporters on Jan. 12, a day after leading the first convoy into the town, describing Madayans as “a people that are desperate; a people that are cold; a people that are hungry; a people that have almost lost hope.”
“He blamed no one in particular for this state of affairs and made no mention of the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah, which in fact is maintaining the siege against Syrian civilians in Madaya,” according to Gutman.
However, the UN’s conduct during the crisis has prompted outrage from 112 Syrian humanitarian workers, who, in an open letter published the next day, on Jan. 13, accused the UN kowtowing to Assad’s regime and “chasing permission you do not even need.”