Protecting Hawl Camp residents must be front and center, Griffiths
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Hawl Camp in Syria’s northeast where some 56,000 people live should be considered and the protection of camp’s residents must be “front and center,” Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said in a briefing to the UN Security Council on Thursday.
“Incidents resulting in death and injury, including of children, continue…… The protection of camp residents, most of them women and children, must be front and center. At the same time, we need to maintain the civilian character of the camp,” he added.
“We continue to be concerned about the deteriorating security situation in Al Hol.”
The Hawl Camp east of Hasakah, northeast Syria, is a house for about 15,300 families in total of 56,000 individuals including 2,423 families of the Islamic State Organization (ISIS) detained or killed militants, who hail from over than 60 countries.
Hawl Camp is also known as a “ticking time bomb” due to the presence of extremists of ISIS wives and children, and tens of thousands of their supporters in a camp sometimes described as “the most dangerous camp in the world”.
He called for the full repatriation of third-country nationals from camps in northeast Syria.
Speaking of the humanitarian assistance and the cross-border access mechanism, he called for ensuring full humanitarian access to people in need, “wherever they are”, and pressed the Council to maintain consensus on renewing the resolution authorizing cross-border access for the United Nations and its partners.
“In the north-east, the United Nations must be able to coordinate the humanitarian response from within the country through our hub in Qamishli,” he noted.
“Now, more than ever, we need action to show the people of Syria that they are not forgotten,” he emphasized.