Impassioned Blinken demands more crossings for Syria aid

United Nations, United States: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday urged the UN Security Council to reopen border crossings into Syria blocked by Russia, saying world powers should be ashamed by their inaction.

Chairing a virtual Security Council session on Syria, the mild-mannered top US diplomat spoke with clear passion as he voiced outrage at Syrians’ continued suffering 10 years into the civil war.

"How is it possible that we can’t find in our hearts the common humanity to actually take meaningful action?" said President Joe Biden’s top diplomat, recalling his own two children. "Look into your hearts," he implored. "We have to find a way to do something -- to take action to help people. That is our responsibility. And shame on us if we don’t."

Relief supplies into Syria, where most of the population relies on aid, as of July 2020 can enter only one crossing -- Bab al-Hawa on the Turkish border. Veto-wielding Russia, which is allied with President Bashar al-Assad, successfully opposed other crossings on the grounds that they violate the Damascus government’s sovereignty.

"Sovereignty was never intended to ensure the right of any government to starve people, deprive them of life-saving medicine, bomb hospitals or commit any other human rights abuse against citizens," Blinken said.

He pointed to a Russian strike last week near the Bab al-Hawa crossing that disrupted all aid delivery into Syria. Blinken called for the reopening of closed crossings at Bab al-Salam, also on the Turkish border, and Al-Yarubiyah on the Iraqi border, saying that they respectively supplied four million and 1.3 million Syrians. "Let’s give ourselves more pathways, rather than fewer pathways, to deliver food and medicine to the Syrian people," Blinken said.