Colum Lynch reports: During the past year, the United Nations’ chief relief agency has routinely withheld from the public vital details of the Bashar al-Assad regime’s systematic campaign to block humanitarian assistance to Syrian civilians. This silence has infuriated human rights advocates, who believe that greater public exposure of Assad’s actions would increase political pressure on the Syrian government to allow the international community to help hundreds of thousands of ordinary Syrians who are trapped in the line of fire.

Instead, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) — which oversees international relief efforts in Syria — has relied on low-key, behind-the-scenes diplomacy to quietly persuade the Syrian regime to open the aid floodgates. So far, critics say, the strategy has been ineffective. Worse, it provides a measure of political cover to the Assad regime as it carries out mass starvation and slaughter, these critics contend.

The U.N. “should be much more willing to point the finger at the Syrian government when they are responsible for vast blockages of aid. They haven’t said enough about who is responsible for violations and the character of those violations,” said Peggy Hicks, the head of advocacy for Human Rights Watch. “There is always a balancing act, but we have been concerned that the U.N. has been reluctant to recognize the limits of working behind the scenes.” [Continue reading…]