Airdrops to Daraya

Sometimes, the best way to make your demands heard is to talk to the recipients directly. On 13 May 2016, The Syria Campaign tweeted Abeer Etefa, a spokesperson for the UN’s World Food Programme. We also included the Twitter accounts for the programme and UNOCHA and asked why the UN refused to call for aid airdrops to Daraya where people had been without food or medicine for 1,301 days.

Superficially, the tweet performed poorly, gaining only 58 retweets and 18 likes. But, it secured a response from Etefa who said airdrops required Syrian government approval and were too risky to use over civilian areas, an excuse that was criticised by the group Syria UK. Etefa also said that land access would be best for reaching Daraya, but the Syrian government would have to give the UN access. (This second tweet was posted after our thread.)

This allowed us to respond with 10 tweets pointing out that per a UN resolution, government approval isn’t needed for airdrops, but if the UN feared their planes being shot down by the regime and Russia, they should say so. We pointed out that there were groups on the ground who could receive aid, meaning that airdrops were a safe option. We added that the UK government had said it wasn’t considering airdrops because the UN wasn’t calling for them. Finally, we said that UN insiders had told us that the UN would refuse to call for anything that might upset the regime. Etefa responded to say that the UN needs unconditional access to save lives.

Though our tweets didn’t lead to airdrops to Daraya, we ensured that a senior UN official was made aware of our demands, and we helped expose the UN’s excuses for not providing aid as meritless.