Inside Geneva: Aid Access Dilemmas

In this episode of Inside Geneva we take a long hard look at how aid is delivered, and why it is often obstructed. Did UN aid agencies fail Syria after the earthquake?

Marco Sassoli from Geneva University speaking to Inside Geneva says: “The UN being a club it represents its members, and therefore it considers that it cannot do anything on the territory of a member state without the consent of the member state.”

But are there ways to get aid in immediately?

Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council says he is “a fundamentalist on the need to go straight to the victims, the people in need cross border cross line, cross mountain, cross desert, the shortest route.”

But with armed groups on the ground, how do aid workers persuade them to let them in?

Thaer Allaw, from the Center for Competence on Humanitarian Negotiation explains this difficulty: “We think that we have a good cause, and we think that those humanitarian principles are universal. And then when you hit the reality they are not.”

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