Syria’s Survival: Heads of U.N. Agencies Make Joint Plea to International Community

[Time]

It takes a major crisis for the U.N.'s humanitarian agencies, often rivals, to speak with one voice. But the calamitous death and destruction in Syria prodded five chiefs of U.N. organizations to issue a desperate joint plea on Tuesday, on YouTube and in newspapers across the world, warning that unless governments find a political solution to end the two-year war, they could be forced to end some relief programs for ravaged Syrian communities. "After all this, there still seems an insufficient sense of urgency among the governments and parties," says the message, which was rushed into production over the past 10 days, as estimates of those killed in the conflict were put above 70,000. "We are precariously close, perhaps within weeks, to suspending some humanitarian support." As a measure of how dire the suffering in Syria's war zones has become, the U.N. organizations' joint appeal was rare, and included filmed messages from the chiefs of the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) in New York City; the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Health Organization and the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, all in Geneva; and the World Food Programme in Rome. In a departure from their more characteristically neutral tone, the executives let their anger show on the video, delivering a blunt message to politicians: that their paralysis over how to end the war is pushing the entire region to "a tipping point." "We ask that [politicians] use their collective influence to insist on a political solution to this horrendous crisis before hundreds of thousands more people lose their homes and lives and futures," they say. "The needs are growing while our capacity to do more is diminishing, due to security and other practical limitations within Syria as well as funding constraints." (MORE: Why Reports of Chemical Weapons Attacks in Syria May Never Be Confirmed) U.N. officials have issued countless reports about conditions inside Syria since the conflict erupted in February 2011. But as the war grinds into its third year, the relief organizations are already strained by

Via: TIME GlobalSpin