In early April, two trucks belonging to the World Food Programme (WFP) were hijacked en route to Aleppo. It was but the latest in a string of incidents primarily involving rebel forces that have challenged the ability of UN organizations to provide aid and health care to those Syrians who need it most.

"There is very little food, we share everything we have," says 16-year-old Zeinab al-Musta, wise beyond her years. Having fled Homs with her family over three months ago, she spends her days "working in the house"-- as she now calls the feeble tent pitched in a parking lot in Lebanon's northern Wadi Khaled area.

“There is no comparison to this life and our life in Syria,” says Bilal, 42, shivering. “We live with seven people in one room where we don’t see the sun, the rain drips through the roof, and we feel the humidity.” Bilal and his family fled the outskirts of Yarmouk camp last November with one suitcase each, after being stuck in the middle of rebel and regime forces.

Sixteen year-old Rasha had dreamt of being a doctor. Now she spends her days in a tent provided by The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), awaiting news that food has arrived in the Zaatari camp, located in a swath of desert on Jordan’s northern border with Syria.

“It is what it is,” says 49-year-old Khaled Nahar. “People have been trying to help.” Khaled, his two wives, and their seven children fled their house in Homs when it was being shelled seven months ago. They used to be an affluent family, living in a four-story house. Now they live in a single room of a half-constructed house in Aarsal, a Lebanese town near the Syrian border. They share a kitchen with six other families and have no plumbing.

When the Syrian Army bombed Nahla’s home in Aleppo last month, she fled for her life with her five children, across the border to Lebanon. She now lives in Shatila, a suburb of Beirut, in a sparely furnished apartment; mattresses are her only possession. Receiving no aid from any agencies, and surviving off her husband’s $500 salary he earns as a chauffeur, she is just one of Syria’s 170,000 refugees.

The international community took a new stab at solving the Syrian crisis on Saturday by agreeing to guidelines for the political transition mentioned in Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan’s Six Point Plan. The outcome elicited a host of reactions from those it is supposed to guide, as well as UN actors. Few seem confident that talking will end the bloodshed.

Syria and the world were shocked by news of a massacre in Houla, the largest scale violence since the UN deployed 300 monitors to the country. The monitors were sent to observe the implementation of UN-Arab League Joint Envoy Kofi Annan’s six-point plan, but so far their deployment has failed to stem the violence.

For months now, protestors have crowded the streets of global capitals—first Tunis, then Cairo, Sana’a, Tripoli, and many more. They’ve defied violent regimes, shattered stereotypes, and inspired a global audience of admirers to prove, as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said back in August, human rights are “for all of us, all the time, everywhere.”