Yes. Well, obviously, it's part of the reality within which we work. It's not, by the way, completely new. If you look over the history of the United Nations, you see that there are quite often periods when these kinds of tensions have been evident, and when the Security Council has found it difficult to find a consensus on how to move forward. That's evidently the case at the moment. On some topics, there's a high degree of consensus in the Security Council—for example, on Yemen at the moment. On others, there's a lower degree of consensus.
What I would say in respect of the resolution you talked about that was debated in December, which is the resolution that mandates the humanitarian organizations to provide the assistance, crucially to the 3 million civilians in Idlib I talked about earlier, is that, as in 2017, ultimately the Security Council agreed that this should continue. As you say, there were 13 votes in favour, but crucially, there were no vetoes.
Ultimately, that was permitted to happen. Questions were raised. There were some legitimate questions raised: How do we know that assistance being transferred across the border is reaching people in need, given that, as is well established, there are large numbers of adherents of proscribed terrorist organizations in that part of the country? Well, we have a good answer to that question of how we know, because we have a very sophisticated monitoring and review system, with multiple checks and all sorts of third party arrangements that give us those assurances. We need those assurances not just for people who are raising the kinds of concerns the Russians raised, but also to give assurances to the people who are financing those operations.
What you've described is the reality of the world in which the humanitarian system that I coordinate operates. I could wish it to be different, but every day I wake up and I find it as it is, and we have to try to find our way forward in those circumstances.