An investigation has found that the agency has awarded huge contracts, some worth millions of dollars, to organisations including the Syria Trust, a charity founded and chaired by Assad’s British-born wife, Asma, and the al-Bustan Association and state mobile phone network Syriatel, both run by his cousin Rami Makhlouf.
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Fears have been raised that the UN’s aid program is becoming increasingly accommodating to Damascus.
The official, who has worked extensively inside Syria, said that while operating inside the country was challenging, the UN’s position was disappointing. “It’s as serious as that”, he added.
The UN says that its relief work has already saved millions of lives and argues it has to work with the regime if it wants to operate in Syria.
“Our choices in Syria are limited by a highly insecure context where finding companies and partners who operate in besieged and hard to reach areas is extremely challenging”, they said.
According to the Guardian, the United Nations relief mission to Syria has awarded sizable contracts to businessmen who are under US and European Union sanctions, including charities set up by Assad’s wife Asma and close cousin Rami Makhlouf. $5 million has gone to a blood bank directly controlled by the Syrian military, even though some of the donors are governments with strict economic sanctions against Assad’s regime.
Syrians wait to fill up their water gallons at a shelter in Hirjalleh, a rural area near the capital Damascus.
Although the UN is transparent and publishes the names of its suppliers, Assad’s grip on relief efforts has created unease among some UN agencies, a UN official said. Many are likely to have links to Assad, or those close to him. “Upholding fundamental human rights loses almost every time”.
However, another United Nations official, speaking to the Guardian anonymously, said that some of the organization’s agencies were uncomfortable about the Assad regime’s influence on its aid program. “Activists and medical workers started to smuggle [supplies] to areas under siege and field hospitals”, said Dr Zaher Sahloul.
The regime has been known to impose restrictions on what can be distributed and by whom. “Very limited transparency is a problem that affects the whole aid effort in Syria”, they continued. “He needs to establish an inquiry with a mandate to investigate the facts of the system’s response to the humanitarian crisis in Syria, and it should cover the period March 2011 to December 2016”.
The UN can only work with a short list of partners, and only with the blessing of Assad.
With no end in sight to the vicious civil war in Syria, a United Kingdom daily has unearthed evidence that backs a sickening claim that the UN is actually providing Assad millions of dollars.
“When faced with having to decide whether to procure goods or services from businesses that may be affiliated with the government or let civilians go without life-saving assistance, the choice is clear: our duty is to the civilians in need”.
The U.N. has paid more than $13 million to the Assad regime since 2011 to stimulate farming and agriculture despite European Union sanctions banning trade with the government departments due to concerns over how the money is being spent, according to contracts unearthed by the Guardian.
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Figures also show that $900 million of the total $1.1 billion in the United Nations relief efforts in 2015 was spent on “aid funneled through Damascus”.
