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www.unocha.org The mission of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is to mobilize and coordinate effective and principled humanitarian action in partnership with national and international actors. approvals above and beyond the two steps agreed with the Government in April, lack of adherence to agreed protocols at checkpoints, and insecurity. For the same reasons, this month, only five aid convoys have been able to proceed so far: Duma on 19 October, Dar Kabira on 20 October, Moadamiyeh this past Sunday, and Al Houla on Monday, Al Wa’er today. All in all, in the last three months, the UN has been unable to deploy the first convoy until the third week of the month. The first cross-line convoy in August only deployed on the 23rd of the month. The one in September deployed on the 19th of the month, and now in October, again, our first inter-agency convoy only deployed on the 19th. This means that no aid reached many of those most in need, in besieged and hard-to-reach locations, for the first three weeks of each of the last three months. And while airlifts to Qamishly continued these past few weeks, air drops to Deir ez-Zour needed to be suspended as one SARC volunteer was hit by shrapnel from ISIL shelling while on the collection site. Moreover, the removal of life-saving medicines and medical supplies by the Syrian authorities, such as surgical kits, midwifery kits, and emergency kits has continued unabated. So far this year, between January and September, 220 tons of medical supplies were delivered to besieged and hard-to-reach areas as part of inter-agency convoys. But 65 tons of medicines and medical supplies were not. These last few weeks alone, the Syrian authorities removed or prevented the loading of nearly 6 tonnes of medical supplies, mostly surgical materials, diarrhoeal and midwifery kits, IV fluids, anaesthetics, and various medicines, from inter-agency convoys to Duma (19 October), Dar Kabira (20 October), Moadamiyeh (23 October), Al Waer (24 September), Zabadani and Madaya (25 September) and Al Rastan and Duma (aborted on 27 and 28 September). These restrictions are not only violations of international law and your Council resolutions, they are actions deliberately and cynically designed to inflict more unnecessary suffering on civilians living in besieged and hard-to-reach locations. Mr. President, distinguished Council members, Throughout the country, nearly eight million children have lost their parents, their homes, their schools. They have suffered immense emotional and physical traumas. Children in besieged eastern Aleppo were due to resume school in late September. They didn’t. Instead, shell-shocked children are retrieved from rubble and left writhing in bloody clothes on dirty hospital floors. They are stuck in hideouts. They cannot play, they cannot sleep. That has become the reality for 100,000 children in eastern Aleppo. Across the country, as you all know, one in four schools has ceased to function. More than 52,000 teachers have left their jobs. Over two million children remain out of school and another 400,000 are at risk of dropping out as the horrors of this brutal and savage war continue unabated. Hundreds of thousands of Syrian children have become stateless, it doesn’t matter that many of us are trying and would reach them if we could, those children who are and somehow just surviving, feel abandoned by the world, abandoned to face their future alone. What future do these children have - illiterate, orphaned, starved and maimed? What future does a country have when its next generation is a lost generation? These children do not have the luxury of waiting for another Geneva, Vienna or Lausanne to succeed. They need our protection now. What happened to ‘never again’? What happened to our commitment to protect the most vulnerable, those who face mass atrocities? What happened to this Council’s responsibility to act in a timely and decisive manner? There’s surely nothing timely nor decisive about the world’s approach to Syria so far. The international community cannot fail the children of Aleppo as it did in Srebrenica, Cambodia and Rwanda. Mr. President, There is no question today about whether you, Members of this Council, know what is going on – you clearly and tragically do. The question today is what you will do? What steps will you take t