86 FOOD, AGRICULTURE & WATER
This council enabled us to make regular, cross-
line, and cross-border deliveries. In fact last
month alone we were able to reach an additional
528,000 people using the border crossings
provided through resolution 2165. which provides choice to the beneficiary and
cash to businesses in host communities has been
severely limited… 190,000 Syrian refugees living
in extreme poverty now receive food assistance
worth just $28 dollars per person per month.
Expanding cross-border activities depends not
only on our ability to safely cross but also on our
adequate financial resources. We have been forced to cut assistance by half for
almost a quarter of a million more refugees living in
absolute poverty. Now, they must try to feed their
families on $14 per person per month. Limiting
their ability to purchase nutritious food.
Our 2015 plan is to reach 4 million people inside
Syria, and 2.3 million more outside, but funding
shortfalls are putting this already limited assistance
in jeopardy.
Current funding commitments do not reflect the
humanitarian needs of this prolonged conflict.
Because of funding shortfalls, we have been
forced to cut the family food basket inside of Syria
by 30 percent. Those cuts have a significant
nutritional impact and can lead to Protein Energy
Malnutrition.
Funding shortfalls also limit plans like those with
UNICEF to reach pregnant and lactating women
and to provide an integrated school feeding
program.
We also made cuts in Lebanon, where the
refugee crisis has increased unemployment and
overstretched national health, education and
infrastructure services. A decrease in targeted
donor funding forced us to reduce not only
the number of people served but the level of
assistance we provide to those we serve.
We will also cut the number of people we serve in
Egypt, Iraq, and Turkey.
Over the course of this month, 400,000 refugees
across the entire region will be completely cut from
our food purchase program.
If we fail to provide the school meals which
bring children back to school and keep them in
school, we will miss the opportunity to teach them
different lessons than this conflict teaches. When we announced the reductions in Jordan
our hotlines were overwhelmed. Thousands of
appeal calls come in each day. Calls from families
that have exhausted their resources and feel
abandoned… by us all. One woman told us, “I
cannot stay… if I cannot feed my children.”
As this council knows and as the High
Commissioner highlighted, the Syrian refugee
crisis threatens stability across the region. Families like hers consider once-unthinkable
options: returning to Syria or illegally trying to
make the dangerous cross into Europe.
In the five neighbouring countries, particularly in
Jordan and Lebanon, refugees now compete with
their hosts for homes, for employment, for water,
and for food. Without reliable access to food, people become
easy targets for traffickers and for extremists.
I must warn this Council: when we reduce food
access operations we shift the burden from the
international community to host communities and
governments.
Communities like those in Jordan where
participation in the Regional Voucher Programme,
Without reliable access to food, this region and its
children are in danger.
as the extremist actors.
And we ask for your support. Because, despite
important improvements in access facilitated by
this council and member states, we need to do
more.
We must maintain essential lifesaving food access
and nutrition programmes including the necessary
funding.
And we must make sure we meet the nutritional
and educational needs of Syria’s children.
To avoid lack of access to food becoming a
political issue… the length and complexity of
this crisis means we must increase not reduce
financial investments in food and nutritional
assistance.
Ladies and gentlemen, until we deliver the political
solutions that create peace. We must implement
the humanitarian solutions that create hope and
stability across the region.
Failure to do so will haunt us all for decades to
come.
We cannot ask parents to raise their children in a
region without food, a region without peace.
We cannot leave parents to pull their children
out of school to search for food, for work, for
protection from armed groups.
We cannot expect parents to raise children in
a region where picking up a gun is easier than
picking up a book.
Without your support, there will be no food
security and without food security there is no
security.
We can do better.
Excellencies, this conflict rages on without a
political solution.
Inside Syria, we ask all parties to provide the
necessary humanitarian access—the Government
of Syria as well and the opposition groups as well
We must do better.
Thank you.