I. Introduction
The present report is the fifty-seventh submitted pursuant to paragraph 17 of Security Council resolution 2139 (2014), paragraph 10 of resolution 2165 (2014), paragraph 5 of resolution 2191 (2014), paragraph 5 of resolution 2258 (2015), paragraph 5 of resolution 2332 (2016), paragraph 6 of resolution 2393 (2017) and paragraph 12 of resolution 2401 (2018), in which the Council requested the SecretaryGeneral to report, every 30 days, on the implementation of the resolutions by all parties to the conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic.
The information contained herein is based on data available to agencies of the United Nations system and obtained from the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic and other relevant sources. Data from agencies of the United Nations system on their humanitarian deliveries have been reported for October 2018.
II. Major developments
Box 1
Key points: October 2018
Following a period of relative calm in the second half of September, October saw increased hostilities in several locations in and around Idlib Governorate in the north-west of the country. While air strikes were not reported in the area in October, numerous incidents of shelling involving Government forces and non-State armed opposition groups took place. Civilians in the north-west also continued to be impacted by hostilities and tensions involving non-State armed opposition groups and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (Levant Liberation Organization), and continued to face a range of protection threats.
Thousands of civilians were affected by an escalation of hostilities in southeastern Dayr al-Zawr Governorate, where military operations against Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) continued in the Hajin enclave. Military operations continued to result in injury, death and displacement among the civilian population and the destruction of civilian infrastructure.
Efforts to deploy an inter-agency aid convoy to the Rukban camp on the SyrianJordanian border, where up to 50,000 people faced an increasingly dire humanitarian situation, continued. A convoy planned for 27 October was postponed due to reported security threats. At least four children were reported to have died in the camp in October owing to a lack of access to adequate health care.
United Nations humanitarian agencies and their partners continued to reach millions of people in need. From inside the country, the United Nations reached more than 2.63 million people with food assistance. No inter-agency humanitarian convoys were deployed in October and the bimonthly inter-agency convoy plan for September and October was not approved by the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic. However, United Nations agencies and humanitarian partners continued to reach people across the country through regular programming, including in several locations under Government control categorized as hard-to-reach. Cross-border assistance also remained an indispensable part of the response, with food assistance for some 583,000 people delivered by the United Nations from Turkey during October.