A remote sensing research about Syria conducted by State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing is quoted by UN Security Council’s report recently.

On March 11th, academician Deren Li and doctor Xi Li announced their research findings through non-governmental organization WithSyria: result of satellite remote sensing shows that the number of lights visible over Syria at night has fallen by 83 percent since the war began. In some of the most war-ravaged areas, like Aleppo, an estimated 97 percent of the lights have gone out, exposing the severe humanitarian crisis in this country

More than 100 media worldwide have released report about this event, including CNN, BBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post, etc. The New York Times even reported the research with a full page on March,14th.

On March 26th, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs quoted the research achievement in Security Council Briefing on Syria: “Satellite imagery discovers that 83 per cent of the lights have gone out in Syria over the past four years. This is an average. The cuts are even higher in areas like Aleppo." UNOCHA used the research results and other data together as comprehensive evidence, and strongly appeal to the international community to take practical actions to seek political solutions for the Syria problem. The whole passage on UNOCHA’s website:    

https://docs.unocha.org/sites/dms/Documents/26March2015%20USG%20Valerie%20Amos%20Statement%20to%20SecurityCouncil%20on%20SYRIA.pdf

(Rewritten by Hanxu Wang, edited by Sijia Hu)