(14 Jan 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Damascus, Syria – 14 January 2025
1. Various of Cindy McCain U.N. World Food Program chief
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Cindy McCain, WFP chief:
“What’s at stake here is not just hunger, and hunger is big enough, but it’s about the future of this country and how it moves forward into this next phase if we’re going to move into. And it’s up to me and others like me and other agencies to make sure that we press that message and the urgency of it. As I said, I like to rely on and look to the better nature in people and that the needs will outshine the…political, or not the political…the wariness that donors have right now."
3. Cutaway of McCain
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Cindy McCain, WFP chief:
"There’s great need here. And we can’t ignore this. It’s not just about food security and security for a nation, but it’s also about regional security. And so we want to make sure that the people of Syria are obviously well fed, but also have an ability to become self-sufficient when it comes to raising food and having food."
5. Cutaway
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Cindy McCain, WFP chief:
"It’s important that the Gulf countries particularly pay attention because this is their backyard. We would like to see them more engaged obviously. We would like to see them more active in not just the short-term emergency needs but the long-term needs as well.”
7. Cutaway of McCain
8. SOUNDBITE(English) Cindy McCain, WFP chief:
“Food security is national security no matter where you’re at. Hunger does not breed goodwill. We want to make sure people are fed and that their children have their ability to not just eat, but also go to school, and all the other things we want for a good society.”
9. Exterior of Four Seasons Hotel
STORYLINE:
Some governments are hesitant to boost funding for urgent humanitarian needs in Syria under the country’s new interim rulers after the fall of former President Bashar Assad, the director of the U.N. World Food Program said Tuesday.
WFP chief Cindy McCain said Syria’s struggle with hunger is a national and regional security issue, especially as the country goes through a critical transition period.
“What’s at stake here is not just hunger, and hunger is big enough. But it’s about the future of this country and how it moves forward into this next phase,” McCain said in an interview with The Associated Press in her first visit to Syria after she met with the de facto government’s Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani.
Syria for over a month has been under a new de facto government led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, which led a lightning insurgency in December that overthrew Assad following nearly 14 years of conflict.
Humanitarian agencies including the WFP for years have decried budget cuts to programs giving aid to millions of people of Syria, where the U.N. estimates 90% of its population live in poverty, and more than half of its people – over 12 million – don’t know where their next meal will come from.
The country’s critical electricity and water infrastructure is also battered by the war. The agencies have cited shrinking budgets and donor fatigue that worsened after the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Last year, WFP ended its main assistance program which helped feed millions of Syrians, and has been gradually cutting programs that fed millions of Syrian refugees in neighboring countries.
But funding remains a major issue.
“Food security is national security no matter where you’re at,” said McCain.
AP video by Abd Al Rahman Shaheen
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