LONDON: Antonio Guterres will become the first UN secretary-general to visit Syria since 2009 when he travels there this week for meetings with officials and to endorse the political changes in the country since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m pleased to inform the Security Council that the secretary-general will travel to Syria later this week at the invitation of the government,\u201d the UN\u2019s deputy special envoy for the country, Claudio Cordone, told council members on Tuesday during their monthly meeting to discuss developments in the country.<\/p>\n
Guterres will hold talks with the interim president of the Syrian Arab Republic, Ahmad Al-Sharaa, Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani, and representatives of civil society organizations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThroughout his stay he will reaffirm the United Nations\u2019 commitment to supporting the Syrian government and the Syrian people at this defining period in Syria\u2019s history,\u201d Cordone said.<\/p>\n
The last UN chief to visit Damascus was Ban Ki-moon in January 2009, before the civil war that began in 2011 and ended in 2024 when President Bashar Assad and his regime were toppled in the face of an opposition offensive.<\/p>\n
Guterres will also visit members of the UN Disengagement Observer Force, a peacekeeping mission stationed in the country\u2019s southern region that was established in 1974 to maintain a ceasefire between Israel and Syria in the aftermath of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.<\/p>\n
The Syrian government has consistently asked Israeli forces to withdraw from at least 665 sq. km of Syrian territory in the Daraa and Quneitra regions, including a demilitarized UN buffer zone covering about 400 sq. km, which Tel Aviv took control of after the fall of the Assad regime.<\/p>\n
In the face of Israel\u2019s actions, Guterres has on several occasions stressed the important need to respect Syria\u2019s sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity, and adhere to the 1974 Disengagement Agreement that separated Syrian and Israeli forces after the 1973 war.<\/p>\n
Israel has also occupied about 1,800 sq. km in the Golan Heights since 1967, which it effectively annexed in the 1980s and the US has recognized as part of Israel since 2019.<\/p>\n
Syria faces numerous challenges beyond those along its southern border, including postwar reconstruction, revitalization of its energy sector, and efforts to revive a weak economy, where $1 is worth about 12,000 Syrian pounds and the average monthly salary ranges from about $80 to $150.<\/p>\n
Christina Markus Lassen, Denmark\u2019s ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council that \u201cprotection efforts must be sustained and early recovery interventions prioritized\u201d in Syria, as 90 percent of the population continues to live below the poverty line.<\/p>\n
Edem Wosornu, director of the Crisis Response Division at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that 1.7 million Syrian refugees and 1.9 million internally displaced persons have returned to their communities since the end of the civil war.<\/p>\n
About 12 million people were displaced by the conflict, at least 5 million of whom became refugees in neighboring Turkiye, Jordan and Lebanon. Wosornu warned that 15.6 million people still require humanitarian assistance, and 5.5 million people remain displaced within Syria.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery family that returns needs safety, services and a reason to stay,\u201d she said. \u201cHumanitarian needs are vast \u2026 Families cannot afford basic goods. Jobs are scarce. Communities receiving large numbers of returnees are under pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wosornu said repatriated refugees need housing, civil documentation, employment and access to clean water, electricity, schools and healthcare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: Antonio Guterres will become the first UN secretary-general to visit Syria since 2009 when he travels there this week for meetings with officials and to endorse the political changes in the country since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. \u201cI\u2019m pleased to inform the Security Council that the secretary-general will travel …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":100611,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100598"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100616,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100598\/revisions\/100616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}