NEW YORK (Dispatches) – The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has announced it has to cut food aid to Syria, hit by U.S. sanctions, by about half because of a lack of funding.
“An unprecedented funding crisis in Syria is forcing a cut in assistance to 2.5 million of the 5.5 million people who rely on the agency for their basic food needs,” said the WFP.
“After exhausting all other options, WFP took the decision to stretch the extremely limited resources by prioritizing 3 million Syrians who are unable to make it from one week to the next without food assistance rather than continue assistance to 5.5 million people and run out of food completely by October.”
The agency’s representative and Country Director in Syria, Kenn Crossley, described this as a bleak scenario. “Instead of scaling up or even keeping pace with increasing needs, we’re facing the bleak scenario of taking assistance away from people, right when they need it the most.”
The WFP announcement came one day before the European Union is hosting the seventh Brussels Conference on “Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region”.
A day earlier, Russian Ambassador to Syria Alexander Efimov said on Monday that the U.S. sanctions on Syria are posing a major obstacle in the country’s reconstruction.
In remarks to the local online al-Watan newspaper, Efimov hailed the recent restoration of relations between Syria and other Arab countries, mainly Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states, but said the economic cooperation is stranded by the persistent U.S. sanctions.
“These sanctions still constitute a major obstacle to the full participation of the countries of the region in the reconstruction of Syria,” he said, calling on the West to lift all “illegal measures of financial pressure and extortion.”
The ambassador said he hoped other countries in the Middle East help stop the “inhuman policy” as soon as possible.