I would like to welcome you to our Lunchtime Segment series, which is organised by the changing character of war centres.
My name is Kate Natural and I'm a research fellow at the centre of this firm.
The seminars are mostly focussed on some of the topics or themes of gender, character, of conflict,
perform these interdisciplinary approaches which include changes in conflict and find out
mentions such as actors involved in conflict or impacting civilians or methods used in conflict.
And the. Today one of our topic will be conflict in Syria.
And so as I said before, we engage in conflicts.
Often we aim to be interdisciplinary.
So far here we have people, we have speakers who are practitioners, but also speakers from various disciplines such as political science,
anthropology, etc. And today the disciplinary committee will shed light on Syria, on conflict in Syria and the legal framework of writing relief law.
Um, I would like to welcome two speakers today that work on the matter of clear debt for our
country is Professor of Public International Law at the University of University of Oxford.
Sorry, he is a co-director with ILA.
And so I think right. I think the reason I think there is widespread in the field of general international law.
He was advisor to several international organisations such as the United Nations
and the African Union and his extensive list of publications monitoring
here also work and advice of our international organisations such as the United Nations or International or International Committee of the Red Cross.
He is a senior research fellow in Iraq,
associate fellow at Chatham House and also a research fellow in the Individualisation of War Project at the European University Institute.
Thank you. Thank you very much. And I think we're going to be a bit interdisciplinary between us.
We're going to talk about the law, but we're also going to bring in some operational dimensions.
And we've been working on this topic of cross-border humanitarian relief operations for a number of years.
It started through a cooperation started, I think,
in 2013 when I was based at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in New York in that policy branch.
And the humanitarian actors were trying to to grapple with the extremely challenging access situation in Syria.
And I think it's one of the defining characteristics of the humanitarian response in in Syria has
been the difficulty from the outset in actually obtaining access to the country and delivering.
And there are a range of reasons for it. There's active hostilities.
There have been attacks that have been targeted against humanitarian actors or that have incidentally injured humanitarian actors and consignment.
There's been shifting complex front lines, a proliferation of actors holding territory with whom it's necessary to to negotiate access,
and also the instrumental ization of humanitarian assistance by all actors on the ground.
However, one key aspect of the challenges has been the intransigence of the government of Syria
in allowing relief operations and in particular those providing medical assistance.
So against this background, the director of a number of U.N. humanitarian agencies in New York,
we're really trying to understand the legal framework better.
And it seems amazing that in 2003, directors need to understand the legal framework regulating humanitarian relief operations better.
What have we been doing until 2003? The reaction?
So it's a problem. But, you know, the reality is that humanitarian action wasn't really addressed through the lens of the law that much.
It was seen as a far more operational issue.
And the point I always make is that it is extremely important for us to stop and understand the law better.
But on the ground, that's only one element and it's incumbent upon.
Humanitarian actors to continue to treat it as an operational issue.
But that's why in 2003 in New York, there was a need to understand the law better.
And eventually the question was framed very much in terms of what are the rules regulating cross-border relief operations.
Why? Because at that time, as I was saying, Damascus was unwilling to allow relief operations then,
and humanitarian actors were looking at whether it would be possible to respond from neighbouring
states into areas of territory that were not under the control of Damascus at that point.
So it was very much framed as a question on what does the law say with regard to cross border operations?
And I think as a matter of law, the cross-border dimension was a bit of a red herring, quite frankly.
And instead, what was important was to step back and say that the modalities that say are not important.
What is important is the need to see to what extent these realities on the ground affect the basic aspects of the rules,
and in particular, the question of the consent of the territorial states.
Is the consent of Damascus still necessary?
If the operations offer part of the territory not under its control but can be reached by a neighbouring state?
That was the question.
And that question led to the elaboration of the documents that Dapo and I co-authored on the basis of a series of expert workshops
that in fact looks at the entirety of the law regulating humanitarian relief operations in situations of armed conflict.
We started off with a very narrow discussion looking at this consent is required and what amounts to arbitrary withholding of consent,
but realised that it was necessary to look at the entirety of the rules.
And it led to this document. So what we're going to do is I'm going to outline the basic rules of the law regulating relief operations,
and then I'm going to hand over the depo is going to zoom in on some of the issues that were particularly pertinent in in Syria.
So the basic rules are actually pretty straightforward and are the same in both international and non-international armed conflict.
The primary responsibility for meeting the needs of civilians lies with the party that has effective control of the civilians.
And this is something I always have to remind humanitarian actors.
That's where primary responsibility lies. If this party is unable or unwilling to meet the needs,
then offers to conduct relief operations that are exclusively humanitarian and impartial in nature may be made.
The consent of the territorial state is required not to be arbitrarily withheld.
Now the consent is rather, states have no leeway to withhold consent into situations.
The first is situations of occupation. If there are unmet needs in situations of occupation,
the occupying power isn't meeting them and offers to conduct humanitarian relief operations that are important measures are made.
The occupying power has no margin of manoeuvre, no leeway to not agree to an expression.
And the second instance in which states have no discretion to withhold consent is where the Security Council has acted,
taken a binding decision, essentially requiring them to agree to operations.
And we're going to turn to that later, because that's exactly what happened in relation to Syria.
So those are the four steps consent not to be arbitrarily required, not to be arbitrarily withheld.
Once consent has been obtained, all parties must allow and facilitate the rapid, unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief operations.
Now, operationally, most of the problems actually occur at this stage.
Organisations have been given the green light to operate, but then states and organised armed groups fail to do what is required,
what is necessary in order for humanitarians to actually operate.
However,
Syria has very much shone a light on the first set of questions whose consent is required and what amounts to arbitrary withholding of consent.
So we're going to focus on those. Thank you.
So, as you said, we're going to focus on some of those elements of the law or the legal framework that proved to be particularly problematic in Syria,
starting with this question of whose consent is is required.
So we say consent is required, but the consent was not allowed to do so.
So the first question is who's consent is required?
The second issue that arose in Syria and which is continued to be a question of of discussion in terms of the law,
is what does it mean to say that consent arbitrarily withheld?
Are there any criteria by which one can determine that consent of monitoring?
But the second issue I will talk about and then the third issue that I want to talk
about is the question of the legal consequences for unlawfully impeding access,
including unlawfully withholding consent or arbitrarily withholding consent.
So what does the law say? As you indicated,
the critical question in Syria in relation to cross-border operations is the question of whether
humanitarian actors could operate in Syria without the consent of the Syrian government.
What if you follow these steps and you say, well, the Syrian government has acted unlawfully in withholding consent,
what were the consequences of that as natural law consequences for the Syrian government and
consequences for humanitarian actors that actually want to operate within Syrian territory.
So if I go back to this question of whose consent?
So you say consent is that I'll just take a sort of half step back.
We say consent is required in order for humanitarian actors to conduct relief operations in the territory of the state.
Where does that actually come from as a matter of law?
You see this requirement of consent in the additional protocols to the convention.
So there are two additional protocols to the Geneva Conventions of.
Seven. One of those additional protocols deals with international conflicts, the other deals with session conflicts in both.
You have provisions on humanitarian relief operations, and in both sets of provisions, you see this requirement of consent explicitly.
What is clear is that in the context of international armed conflicts,
it talks about these operations being conducted subject to the agreement of the parties concerned having conflicts.
The parties are, of course, states. So it's going to be the concern over a particular state that is is required in a non-international armed conflict.
We're talking about a conflict between a state on the one hand and usually a non-state group on the outside.
It could also be two non-state non-state groups.
And even the the provision in additional protocol two, which deals with non-international armed conflict,
it talks about these operations being undertaken subject to the consent of the high contracting parties concerned.
However, what if you have a non-international armed conflict whereby some of the territory and this is what was going on in Syria,
some of the territories under the effective control of a non-state group and then this operation
coming across the border without passing through the territory that is controlled by by the state.
The complication that arises as a matter of law is that if you look at the Geneva Conventions of 1949, you have a provision of common Article three,
so common to all four Geneva Conventions,
and common Article three provides that impartial and impartial humanitarian body may offer its services to the parties, to the conflict.
And some people interpret Common Article three as implicitly or interpreted Common Article three as implicitly allowing
humanitarian relief operations to be conducted as long as the party to whom the offer was made accepts the offer.
So in their view, if the offer is made to a non-state group and not non-state armed group accepts the offer,
then the humanitarian body is able to operate regardless of the position that's adopted by by the state.
So as long as the operations are transiting through the territory or territory controlled by by the government.
But if you look at the provision that I talked about earlier in the 1977 related protocol,
it's much more it talks about these operations subject to the consent of the high contracting party.
In other words, it identifies whose content is required, and it identifies that as being the consent of the state, the contracting party of seven.
And also, when you think about the interpretation that was given to Common Article three,
which seems to do away with the requirement of the consent of the state.
This seems to be a very significant infringement of the territorial sovereignty of the state concerned.
And it would be all if that requirement or sorry,
that recognition of the state of territorial sovereignty was just done away with in this implicitly
in chronological order in the process that menu was referring to in coming up with this guidance,
we had a series of expert meetings here in Oxford.
The the process, by the way, was one that was conducted, if you like,
under the auspices of the critique of of the UN or Chair of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of State Commission,
and published the report in the meetings that we had here in Oxford.
The majority of experts were not persuaded by this interpretation that says that
you do not need the consent of the state of the state concerned in particular,
because it mean that in certain situations if you don't need the consent of the state.
And so that would suggest that there will be circumstances where no contracting parties
concerned because there's only one state that's involved in that in that conflict.
So more or less right away, this provision in the additional protocol.
So the position that we adopted in this document, the Oxford guidance,
is one that we think gives due weight to general principles of international law concerning territorial sovereignty,
but also to the state's responsibility towards the civilian population.
So the consent of the state is required,
but it has a more limited range of grounds for withholding consent to relief operations where it is intended for
civilians that are in territory that are under the control or under the effective control of an organised conflict.
So that's this question of whose consent is required, that intrusion be it's the consent of the state party,
even if the state party does not have effective control of the territory.
One issue that arose in Syria was also the question of, well, who do we regard as the state party,
particularly at a point in time in which a number of countries recognised what had hitherto been described as the Opposition,
recognise them as the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people.
So there you have questions of recognition. Who should we regard as the government?
Given that we now see that these groups are the legitimate representatives of of the people?
It's important to remember, though,
that despite this pronouncement and it was a collective pronouncement by a number of states of of sort of recognition of some sort of the opposition.
At no stage actually did most of these states recognise the opposition as the Government.
They continued to recognise. Regime, government, whatever you want to call it,
that was headed by Bashar al-Assad as the government in the U.N. and also in bilateral relations, it was regarded as the government.
So there was some confusion caused by this announcement that these were the legitimate representatives of the people, of the Syrian people.
So at no point would it be legally recognised as the government.
So the question was consent takes you back to the government of Bashar.
Saddam Hussein consent is required, but it must not be arbitrarily withheld.
The next question then is what does that mean and what does it mean to say that consent is being arbitrarily withheld?
I think it's important to note, first of all,
that this requirement that consent must not be arbitrary abuse of power is not
one that is stated in terms in those treaty provisions that I referred to.
So those provisions in the 1977 protocol do not have a reference to arbitrary withholding of consent.
You won't find it if you look at it. However,
this principle that prohibits arbitrary withholding of consent can be derived from a
number of a number of areas which are consistent with the rules of treaty interpretation.
So first of all, that principle is derived from the need to provide an effective interpretation of these treaties.
And this is significant because if you look at the treaty provisions,
they say on the one hand that if certain conditions are fulfilled, these humanitarian relief operations shall be carried out.
So that's the first thing. But on the other hand,
they say subject to the content of the agreement of the deep concern shall be carried out if we meet certain conditions but subject to the equipment.
And what that requires is some degree of balancing exercise between the shall and the consent and the arbitrary withholding
on consent principle is one which gives effect to all aspects of those provisions and doesn't read any part of them.
But then secondly, this principle comes from the drafting history of these provisions.
So if you look at the discussions in the drafting of these provisions,
you can see that there was already at that time this suggestion that consent must not be arbitrarily withheld.
I mean, thirdly,
this principle that says consent must not be arbitrarily withheld comes from practice that is subsequent to the adoption of the protocol.
So it comes from the way in which states and other actors have interpreted these principles.
In the context of Syria. We start to see, in particular in the discussions in the Security Council,
we start to see references being made to arbitrary denial of humanitarian access.
Likewise in the General Assembly, likewise with the Human Rights Council.
What does that mean? That does not be arbitrary. We would have.
What does that actually mean? So in this guidance,
we take the view that this notion of arbitrariness has has three meanings contracted the arbitrarily withheld in one of three circumstances.
First of all, if it is withheld in circumstances,
that would result in a violation of that state's obligations under international law with respect to the civilian population in question.
So if by denying consent, the state would be violating its obligations under international law, for example,
if it would be violating the prohibition of of starvation as a method of warfare, for example,
if it is acting in a manner which is discriminatory, which would violate the rules that prohibit adverse distinction,
it would be arbitrary in circumstances for exactly who referred to medical assistance.
So withholding consent to medical relief operations on the ground that the medical supplies cannot be used to treat enemy combatants would be in
violation of by itself because the wounded and the sick must receive to the fullest extent practicable medical care that is required by the.
So if you are violating the rules of control, that would be an arbitrary withholding of.
Secondly, even where the state might have, if you have if you like, that would quite legitimate reasons for withholding consent.
The withholding of consent must not violate the principles of necessity and proportionality.
In other words, the withholding of consent must not go beyond that which is necessary to give effect to those concerns.
And then thirdly, the manner in which consent is withheld might also be relevant to the third limb of arbitrariness would
be where consent is withheld in a manner that is unreasonable or unjust or lacking in predictability.
So that that goes to the matter of withholding.
So that's the second point. This issue of consent must consent is required, but it must not be arbitrarily withheld.
The third issue is the question of consequences.
And this was, I think, in Syria, one of the main reasons why, as many would say,
the humanitarian community was trying to work out what the legal framework was.
The question is, okay, so what happens? Or at least what does the law allow in circumstances where a state is acting lawfully?
So you get to the point where you state the Syrian government is arbitrarily
withholding consent or arbitrarily denying impeding humanitarian operations.
Then what? So consequences can be viewed from two perspectives.
The first of all, you have the consequences for the act or whether it's a state or an individual who is acting unlawfully.
So what are the consequences for them?
And then secondly, the consequences from the perspective of the humanitarian actors who actually want to engage in the operations.
And I will stick to the second consequences for humanitarian organisations who want to carry out these operations.
What can we actually do here as a matter of law?
It's important to separate out the position of states and international organisations, on the one hand acting as humanitarian actors, if you like.
So states and industrialised nations looking to engage in operations on the one hand,
and then non-governmental organisations on the other hand, that legal position, so to speak.
How soon for states of international organisations, if they go into the territory of another state without the consent of the other state,
they would in principle be acting in breach of international law because they would be violating the territorial sovereignty of the other state,
because they have these obligations under international law to respect the territorial sovereignty of the states.
NGOs, on the other hand, do not have that obligation as a matter of international law.
So they are not bound by the principle of territorial sovereignty of much of international law.
But of course, as a matter of domestic law, they would be acting illegally.
So if they were to go into Syria, then they'd be breaching Syrian law,
possibly even Syria, and subject to the criminal law of Syria, at least in theory.
So you have to separate out those two actors, the states and international organisations.
Just in summary, the question, as a matter of international humanitarian law,
there is no rule that would allow them to go in even if, say, the Syrian government is acting on behalf.
However, as a matter of international law, more generally,
they might in extreme circumstances be cases where you could rely on what you might call defences or what in international law we call circumstances,
precluding one from a sort of defence to an action that's over the life of the two that would be most relevant in this circumstance of necessity.
And secondly, what we call counter countermeasures.
So necessity deals with circumstances where you are taking action to either prevent or put to an end something that would cause a degree.
But even in parallel and here the argument would be that it's a great peril to the international community.
So that's the essence of necessity.
The essence of counter-measures is that you are acting unlawfully to respond to action that is in the first place unlawful.
There are some complications in relation to both of those arguments that conditions that you would have to meet,
not least that they wouldn't justify action that amounts to the use of force.
I want to talk about some of those issues. Good to be back to you.
Thank you, Dapo. So what happened? What happened in Syria?
What happened was that the Security Council took the unprecedented step in the summer of 2014 of adopting a Security
Council that effectively imposed the humanitarian relief operations on Syria in Security Council Resolution 21,
six and five. And here, the Security Council adopted this binding decision that U.N. humanitarian agencies and their implementing
partners authorised to use the routes across conflict lines and across borders to deliver in in Syria.
So in a way, what Security Council did was to set aside the rules of how requiring the consent and saying these operations shall be conducted.
So that's what the Security Council did in 2014.
And this resolution has been renewed every year until now.
And so what happened after the Security Council adopted the resolution?
What happened in practice? It's very interesting.
And so it was both cross line operations within Syria by humanitarian actors who were operational in Syria.
They were authorised to deliver commodities cross line and also from neighbouring states cross border.
So cross line was never used.
I have gone back and speak to the humanitarian actors in the region I met last year.
I've just been there and when I spoke to the humanitarian actors and I said, Why didn't you do any cross line?
Did you even try? Security Council didn't authorise that.
They didn't even realise that there was exactly the same authorisation.
It was never tried.
Now we could discuss why it was never tried, whether there might have been a small window of opportunity when Damascus could have gone with it.
It was obvious that it wasn't because I turned up in 2017, three years on, that suddenly they could stop doing it.
Cross line with regard to cross border,
what the Security Council also did was establish a U.N. monitoring mechanism at three
of the four named crossings and U.N. relief consignment would go through these,
be monitored, be downloaded from one truck and then loaded up into Syrian truck.
And really significant deliveries were carried out in this manner.
Not only did the resolution make it impossible to actually bring commodities into the country for these opposition held areas,
it also had a very interesting indirect effect because precisely because it wasn't
lawful for U.N. agencies to conduct relief operations without the consent of Syria,
it would have been very difficult for them to base themselves in neighbouring states in Jordan and Turkey to do that,
because you also need the consent of these states. The fact that there was this resolution authorising the relief operations made
it possible for U.N. actors to establish what have been referred to as hubs.
So in Jordan and in Turkey, from which they carried out activities,
but also coordinated the activities of a range of other humanitarian actors and goes and carried out important
coordination functions in terms of negotiating access modalities with the Turkish and Jordanian authorities,
troubleshooting and dealing with pooled funds, all the the nitty gritty, the mechanics of humanitarian action,
which are really important and which they would not have been able to do absent this resolution because the operations were lawful.
So it was very interesting last year to speak to the humanitarian actors there and to understand interest in cross line didn't happen at all.
Cross border did occur. It was important both in terms of the commodities that came in and also because it allowed these
hubs to be established and because it also meant that it was possible for U.S. NGOs to partner.
Up with local actors within Syria for the delivery of services that we have overlooked a bit.
Focusing on the law, on the right channels, we focussed on commodities because that's what the law looks at.
But in terms of humanitarian response, the services are as important, if not more than the commodities in some instances.
And this resolution offered this umbrella of protection for humanitarian actors
to also go out and team out with local partners for the delivery of services.
So this has been the effect of this Resolution 2017.
It was it's up for renewal every December 2017.
Last year, it looked as though the circumstances on the ground was such that it was not going to be renewed.
That was very much the concern about by humanitarian actors.
Why? Because Russia had indicated that because of the number of reconciliation agreements that had been concluded between Damascus and local groups,
the areas had been pacified and there was no more need for humanitarian action.
Now, that was not, in fact, the reality on the ground, as I said right at the outset.
Humanitarian assistance has been instrumentalized by all the actors on the ground.
And that was very much what we saw following these reconciliation agreements that are essentially capitulation agreements after the siege,
the surrender, and even once there had been a surrender.
Humanitarian assistance was still being used both to reward communities that had surrendered peacefully and to continue to punish those that hadn't.
So definitely reconciliation hadn't removed the need for continuing cross-border relief operations.
And then there were also, you might have heard of this allegations of diversion of the relief goods that
they were going to and some of it that would make it to terrorist groups there.
So those were the dynamics this time last year.
Eventually, the resolution was adopted unchanged, that people were relieved and they were renewed until January, the beginning of next year.
And we're now discussing renewal once again.
And it's very interesting to see, because the political dynamics are extremely different this year.
While last year, Russia was digging its heels in as to whether or not it was going to authorise a renewal this year.
Russia is actually in favour of extending the arrangements once more.
Why? It is very heavily involved in the last significant pocket of territory under opposition control in the
Northwest and is keen to keep things as stable as possible pending resolution of the situation there.
And obviously relief operations are a piece of the puzzle in keeping the situation as calm as possible.
So it looks as though the resolution should pass.
But again, as a matter of law and practice, what has changed in the past year is the situation on the ground and in particular in the south.
But on the border with Georgia, what we have seen is, yes,
we still had this resolution in place that authorised cross-border operations without the need for serious consent.
But now territory that was just over the border from Jordan under opposition
control has now fallen back within the control of the government of Syria.
So what does that mean as a matter of law and practice in terms of the relief operation?
Yes, you still have the resolution authorising them. But on the other side of the border, you have Syria.
So what do we do as a matter of law, both in terms of the operations going through, but also the indirect assistance that the U.N. is providing?
As I was saying to the the humanitarian actors on the ground, and I think we're passing it over to that before the law and then passing a few hours.
In terms of of the policy, what's happened in the South and what does this mean for the Northwest?
So imagine if the resolution were not to be bringing you would go back to the general legal framework that we were talking about earlier.
So you need the consent of the Syrian government.
And the question would be, would they give their consent?
Let's imagine that they don't give them. And then that would mean that except in those exceptional cases that I talked about,
there'd be no legal basis for being able to take it, even if there was some.
Legal basis as a matter of general international law, these sort of defences that I talked about to be able to conduct these operations.
First of all, you have practical difficulties in any way going into territory that's controlled by the Syrian government without the consent of Syria.
Secondly, for international organisations in particular, thinking particularly of the UAE,
they have their own legal sort of structure or framework and they operate in accordance
with the mandate of the institution which would be contained in the institutions,
a constituent instrument.
And so even if a matter of general international law was lawful, that the defence organisations would not operate outside their own mandate.
And so in the case of the UN in particular,
I think the view that's likely to be taken is that it would not be within our mandate to operate without the consent of the Syrian government.
And so in terms of being able to go in and provide direct assistance, that would probably be the outcome.
Then the question would be, what about doing all the indirect work that I was referring to?
In other words, doing all the coordination, doing all the, if you like, the sort of bilateral funding arrangement,
doing all of those things that do not involve the organisation itself going in,
but where it's sort of stepping back and acting as a coordination, would it be entitled to do that or would an actor be entitled to to do that?
So as a matter of international law, the question that arises is whether or not there is a sufficient link between
the humanitarian relief operation that's going on and the act in this case,
the international organisation or possibly possibly a state.
But if we take the U.N. in particular,
if there is sufficient funding such that we see that the acts of those who are carrying out the activities are attributed to the state,
that the expression of in other words, the actions are such that you could regard them as the actions of the UN,
though it's not the U.N. that's doing it. If the UN's acts of coordination, providing funding, providing all the services,
those things such that we can say that these activities of the NGOs that are actually doing the work of the
action and that depends on the degree of control that is exercised by the UN means over these activities.
I think in all probability the degree of control would not be such that the test is quite a high one.
In other words, the test to say that these are acts of the UN, it would require a high degree of control, the way in which these things work.
It's not likely that that test is going to be met.
So in reality of reality, as a matter of law, international law,
this would mean that the UN would be entitled to or able to carry out these acts of
coordination without the acts of assistance themselves being actually taken away.
So it's matter of law to the UN should be able to carry on doing these things.
And then my Freudian slip of reality occurred to me.
I would say that the fact that every year what the laws have to do that I know you don't like it when I say that in reality.
In reality, what has happened in reality in the South has been actually it's been interesting because as I was saying,
the resolution allowed a number of local partners of Syrian operation,
humanitarian actors to operate in opposition held territory, even though they weren't registered with Damascus.
Once it became evident that the government of Syria was going to regain control of UN agencies,
INGOs from outside spoke to their local partners and it was agreed that it would just put them at
too much risk to attempt to continue to operate unregistered once they were under Syrian control.
Again, I'm sure you must have followed those throughout the response and serious concerns about how humanitarian care providers were being treated.
Medical care providers were treated.
It was just agreed by all it was going to be too risky to attempt to continue to work through the same local partners after Damascus regained control.
So what does this meant in practice? Not because they were such a key part of the response.
No effort was made to negotiate and to continue operations cross-border.
So even though there. Resolution foresaw this.
Even if set aside the resolution, go back to basic rules, negotiate with Damascus, let let's see what Damascus is willing to agree to.
And you can talk about what they'd be willing to agree to.
And it was decided not to try it just because there were no local partners on the ground, because it would be too risky for them to to actually work.
So that's what the South has been.
But it should also be a lesson for what in all likelihood are questions that will also be asked in relation to the north west.
What happens if there isn't a resolution? What happens if you have a resolution but you have Damascus up against the border again?
Yes, I think it's excellent that such is the duty of care towards local partners was taken so seriously,
but it has led to a gap in response and needs listed here in the South.
They're extremely severe. Once you start speaking about the north west, that's what it is.
So I think it's incumbent upon humanitarian actors really to to think about how are they going to deal with this situation?
Are they going to try negotiating for relief operations with Damascus?
What about even if they don't do that, what about this provision of indirect support and assistance,
which, as we've seen, they are entitled as a matter of law to continue providing?
And that's a far more I don't want to use the word political.
It's a policy decision for humanitarian actors to take.
Obviously, it's going to unless Damascus agrees to it.
Damascus is not going to be happy that they're continuing to provide the support.
And essentially, it's going to be a question of of balancing.
I think the value added in terms of responding to significant needs in this area
by continuing to provide this important assistance in support of arrangements,
balancing that with the potential negative impact on their own operations within Syria,
because obviously there may be repercussions if Damascus doesn't want them to carry out these activities and they continue to do so.
It might not grant visas for their operations within, it might make it extremely difficult to operate.
This is the balancing act that humanitarian actors and senior management need to be carrying out right now.
And then a final point is donors staged. That's also an important part of the question at two levels.
One is if there are NGOs who will continue to operate cross-border from the north we're talking now, will donors continue to fund their activities?
QUESTION Mark. And the other question also to donors is donors who were willing to fund operations for a particular
operations or population that was rich cross-border from the south when it was under opposition control.
Now that things have changed and the same population with the same needs is reached through Damascus,
are you institutional donor willing to fund that?
And I think this is very much a question about that commitment to principled humanitarian action,
responding to the needs, regardless of whether they come in cross-border violence.
Well, that's.