UN: More than 13 million people are food insecure in Syria

The Representative of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Geneva, Ramesh Rajasingham, said: “more than 13 million people in Syria are suffering high levels of food insecurity.”

Rajasingham’s statement came during a UN Security Council session on the humanitarian situation in Syria.

Rajasingham added: “More than 13 million people, more than half of Syria’s population, are experiencing high levels of food insecurity, and more than 650,000 children as young as five years are suffering from stunting due to malnutrition.”

Rajasingham made it clear that “the Syrian economic shrank by an estimated 1.2% last year, and it is expected to shrank by an estimated 1.5% this year.

Rajasingham pointed out that “the food insecurity is expected to increase in Syria during the coming five months due to the economic crisis and the ongoing conflict in the country and the wider region.”

For her part, The Senior Humanitarian Advisor to the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Najat Rochdi, said: “The problems in Syria have not decreased but rather increased, and the Syrian people is concerned of being forgotten. My message to you on behalf of Pedersen is that Syria is experiencing a high profound crisis and it cannot be resolved without a political solution, and Syrians inside and outside need not only be heard but heeded.”

Rochdi stressed “the need not to forget the detainees, those killed under torture, the missing, the arbitrarily detained, and the kidnapped in Syria.”

Rochdi noted that 7.2 million people have been displaced in Syria and 6.4 million have become refugees, emphasizing the need to take into consideration the large burden on countries hosting refugees and providing support to those countries.