syria-un-20170330 5

United Nations Nations Unies Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 5 the relative progress of last year, particularly the first nine months. The bottom line is, however, that with a quarter of the year gone, our current levels of access are no better than this time last year. Through the March inter-agency convoy plan, we had sought to reach 787,500 people through road convoys. However, original approvals were only received for 44 per cent, or 348,200 people, the lowest approval rate since March 2016 when the monthly plan process began, although this increased to some 74 per cent later in this month when additional approvals for some other locations were received following intense engagement by the UN team on the ground. As we sit here today, with the month virtually complete, we have reached some 200,000 people against the plan. This includes convoys for some 133,500 people in the hard-to-reach areas of Bludan and Wadi Barada in Rural Damascus and Talbiseh in Homs. This is limited incremental progress, thanks to extraordinary efforts of the team on the ground. The only besieged areas reached through our convoy plan were the Four Towns and Khan El Shih in Rural Damascus, which was completed today. (In addition vastly expensive and technically challenging airdrops to Deir-ez Zor continue for nearly 93,500 people given no land access at all to these people besieged by so-called Islamic State.) Even then, various medical items were removed from the convoys, and when we reached Madaya, one of the Four Towns, we were unable to distribute all of the delivered assistance due to sniping by the surrounding militias that in and of itself left several people dead. After painstaking negotiations by our Humanitarian Coordinator and the OCHA team, another convoy is planned to deploy today: to the hard-to-reach area of Rastan in Homs, reaching over 110,000 people in total, which would mean we would reach some 310,000 people against the plan if it successfully deploys. With several convoys over the past week, the pace of convoys is picking up – and I salute the round the clock efforts of my humanitarian colleagues in the UN, SARC, ICRC and other humanitarian partners in Damascus who bravely make it possible. However, it is still the case that for every one convoy that reaches its intended destination, several more are unable to deploy during the month due to the recurring administrative issues and delays from the Government of Syria. At the same time, some non-State armed groups continue to threaten or refuse to cooperate with humanitarian workers. And sustained UN access to areas under the control of ISIL – such as parts of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor governorates - remains extremely limited. While the number of convoys this month represents some progress compared to previou