DAWN’s Democracy in Exile: “The Dire Costs of Ending the U.N.'s Cross-Border Aid Into Syria”

My new piece for DAWN’s Democracy in Exile on the upcoming Security Council vote to renew the UN cross-border aid mandate in Syria:

https://dawnmena.org/the-dire-costs-of-ending-the-u-n-s-cross-border-aid-into-syria

The Security Council vote is important, first of all, for its life-and-death human stakes. If Syria's northwest loses the UN's contribution to the cross-border aid response from Turkey, the humanitarian implications will be disastrous. To take just one key example: other aid organizations insist they can replace only a fraction of the food assistance the UN provides to these vulnerable Syrians, densely packed into the country's most food-insecure region. (And for more on Syria's hunger crisis nationwide: https://tcf.org/content/report/syrians-going-hungry-will-west-act/)

Yet the renewal vote is also important as a test of the Biden administration's early Syria policy, which has prioritized alleviating humanitarian suffering inside Syria. To that end, the administration has seemingly adopted a more-carrot-than-stick approach to winning Russia's assent to cross-border renewal – because, given how the Security Council works, there is no good alternative to achieving some minimum consensus among the council's members.