ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The United Nations endorses new Syrian authorities' plan to reduce reliance on humanitarian support in efforts to tackle the country's issues, a senior UN official said on Tuesday.
"I think from the humanitarian perspective, we share with the Syrian authorities this desire to move from being dependent on humanitarian support to that more resilient development model," Tom Fletcher, emergency relief coordinator for the UN’s humanitarian organization, told Rudaw's Sinan Tuncdemir during a press briefing in New York.
"We have an interest - and we share that with the Syrian authorities - in the humanitarian part of the system not needing to be in Syria," he added.
During a recent interview with the state media, Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa said that his government does not want to merely rely on humanitarian support in tackling the country's crises.
Fletcher told a UN Security Council meeting in August that humanitarian aid services had been stretched to the breaking point and the situation remained “dire” in southern Syria after July’s sectarian violence killed more than 1,600 people and displaced nearly 200,000.
There is also a large funding shortfall. With 16 million Syrians across the country needing assistance, the UN’s Fletcher told the Council only 14 percent of the 2025 humanitarian appeal for Syria is funded and cuts in aid from Western countries are expected to reduce humanitarian staff in the country by at least 40 percent.