MEDIA NOTE
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesperson
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration Kelly T. Clements and Director of USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance Mark Bartolini will represent the United States at the Syria Humanitarian Forum in Geneva, Switzerland on Thursday, March 8, 2012. This forum is the first in a series of planned meetings designed to coordinate the international community’s response to the humanitarian needs of the Syrian people.
The Forum has been organized by the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and is being jointly chaired with the League of Arab States, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and ECHO, the European Commission’s humanitarian aid service.
The United States continues to call on the regime of President Bashar Asad to allow safe access to humanitarian groups to provide life-saving assistance.