Senior Officials Meeting - Statement of the Chair on the Cyprus Maritime Corridor
Further to the Joint Statements of 8 March and 14 March 2024, a senior officials meeting for technical discussions was convened earlier today in Cyprus aiming to accelerate the Amalthea Plan to deliver much-needed additional amounts of humanitarian assistance by sea to Gaza.
This is to complement and is no substitute to all existing routes, in particular through Rafah, Egypt and Jordan, and entry points from Israel into Gaza for aid delivery at scale. The opening of Ashdod port to humanitarian assistance would be welcomed and a significant complement to the corridor.
During the technical meeting the UN Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza Sigrid Kaag, who is in charge with facilitating, coordinating, monitoring, and verifying the flow of aid into Gaza, under UN Security Council Resolution 2720 (2023), also presented the way in which the maritime route can be one of the many entry points needed to scale up assistance into Gaza, including the UN mechanism and the prospect of setting up a Secretariat.
At today’s meeting, the over thirty-five countries and several international agencies deliberated on technical aspects with the aim of scaling up capacity, as well as flexible funding modalities. Towards this end the Amalthea Fund to which parties can contribute was announced and the possibility of a UN-managed multi-donor fund was discussed. Further deliberations with core partners will follow in the coming days.
The participants, also, reaffirmed that protecting civilian lives is a key element of international humanitarian law that must be respected and that together we must all do more to ensure aid gets to people who desperately need it.
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Thursday, 21 March 2024