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United Nations Nations Unies Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 1 UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS AND EMERGENCY RELIEF COORDINATOR, STEPHEN O’BRIEN Statement to the Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Syria New York, 30 March 2017 Checked against delivery Mr. President, Distinguished Members of the Security Council, The Syrian conflict has entered its seventh year and we have all borne witness to one of the largest man-made humanitarian and protection crises in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions more injured. Over five million people have fled and are now living as refugees. Crimes against humanity and war crimes have been committed by all parties time and again, as the Commission of Inquiry attested to earlier this month. In Syria, there is not a man, woman or child from any walk of life who hasn’t been impacted by the particular wretchedness of this particularly gruesome and protracted conflict. Syrians have watched huge parts of their historic and proud country reduced to rubble. The building blocks of civilian life have been gradually destroyed, including bakeries, water stations, hospitals, schools, and places of worship. The parties gathering in Geneva this week – and those around this table today – surely understand the huge responsibility on their shoulders to bring this Syrian nightmare to an end after years of political intransigence. I cannot emphasize enough how high the stakes are. The Syrian people need to see a tangible improvement in their daily lives because, quite frankly, it is they who have borne the brunt of this conflict. It is my hope, and the hope of every humanitarian, to see the current political process succeed and we are fully behind the Secretary-General, his Special Envoy de Mistura and his team. While we rightly acknowledge the current efforts on the political track, we have to maintain a laser focus on the fact that violence continues to rear its ugly head in various parts of the country, even if it largely disappeared from the world’s TV screens since the evacuation of East Aleppo. Indeed, the last months have been some of the worst yet for civilians inside Syria. For Syria, that is saying something. The continued use of explosive weapons as well as ongoing military operations in populated towns and villages in Hama, Damascus, Idlib, Aleppo, Dar’a, Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor governorates have killed and injured hundreds of civilians over the past weeks an