UN official: ‘I am willing to speak to Daesh if it helps people’

The UN is willing to speak to everyone in conflict zones, including Daesh, in order to deliver aid to those in need, a senior official said yesterday.

Speaking on the sidelines of the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, Turkey, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council and Special Advisor to the UN Envoy for Syria, Jan Egeland said: “I, as a humanitarian, need to talk to whoever is in control of civilian populations and I am willing to speak to anybody if it leads me to help the people who are in dire need in conflict areas – including the so-called terrorist organisations. We need to be able to speak to these people.”

“We need to be in areas where terrorist groups are in control. If we are not there, as we fail in many places because it is too dangerous, we are failing the civilians. Under the Islamic State, five to seven million people live, including until today the people of Fallujah. Fallujah was a place where we were not able to go. We are not in Fallujah and the 50,000 people there maybe lose their lives because there are no witnesses, no one is there among them.”

Egeland explained that relief agencies need financial support, but the summit should also focus on the delivery of aid to millions of people who are trapped in areas of crisis.

Remarking on the situation in Syria, Egeland said the humanitarian situation there is deteriorating by the day, because Syrian regime forces prevent the delivery of aid.

The World Humanitarian Summit kicked off in Istanbul on Monday under the auspices of the United Nations with the participation of some 60 heads of states and representatives of relief agencies and civil society organisations.