United Nations investigators warn that the humanitarian crisis in Syria is threatening to spiral out of control as violence increases and the collapsing economy keeps the population mired in poverty and hopelessness 13 years after civil war broke out in the country. Across Syria, 16.7 million people - more than 70 percent of the population - are in need of humanitarian assistance and protection, with women and children particularly affected.
“As world attention and resources shift to other grave political or humanitarian crises, Syria descends further into a quagmire of misery and despair,” Paulo Pinheiro, chair of the UN Syria Commission of Inquiry, told the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) on Friday.
Presenting the latest report of the three-member commission, Pinheiro painted a bleak picture of a society that has fallen into an abyss of "multiple failures and missed opportunities."
“We have seen 13 years of internal armed conflict brought about by the Syrian state’s violent and repressive response to peaceful demonstrations,” he said. “Our report to you documents continuing arbitrary detentions with state officials continuing to forcibly disappear, torture and ill-treat detainees in their custody.”
The report says fighting has intensified along multiple front lines as disparate military forces use heavy artillery to maintain territorial control and resort to intensified violence against their perceived political opponents. It accuses these militias of committing a litany of human rights violations and abuses against civilians, raising fears “of a large-scale war” breaking out.
For example, the report says that in the northwest of the country, a Syrian armed group, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, and some factions of the Syrian National Army continue to "arbitrarily detain, torture, and disappear civilians and those perceived as political opponents."
The report cites intensified fighting by Syrian government forces in the Idlib area of northwest Syria, where civilians have been killed, injured and maimed “in unlawful attacks” with cluster munitions in densely populated urban centers.
In the incidents investigated by the Commission, the report finds that more than 150 civilians, half of them women and children, were killed and injured by government forces. The vast majority were killed in indiscriminate ground attacks near frontline villages and towns "in violation of international humanitarian law."
“Such attacks may amount to war crimes,” it says, noting that “airstrikes by Syria’s ally, Russia, again led to casualties.”
“Aerospace forces of the Russian Federation may have failed to take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law,” the authors of the report say.
Commission Chair Pinheiro expressed particular alarm at “the heightened regional tensions stemming from the conflict” in Israel and Lebanon.
“These have led to intensified Israeli airstrikes — and last week a raid into Syria —targeting Iranian officials and militias across Syria, causing civilian casualties on at least three occasions,” he said. “Iranian-affiliated groups and the US have stepped up attacks on each other in northeast Syria since the start of the Gaza war.”
He warned of the dangers to the system of international law itself “if the member states charged with upholding it are seen to be failing in this obligation,” a sentiment shared by Geir O. Pedersen, UN special envoy for Syria.
In a briefing Friday to the UN Security Council, Pedersen said he was deeply alarmed at the reports of “a large number of communication devices exploding across Lebanon as well as in Syria […] resulting in casualties, including children, and subsequent Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon and Hezbollah rocket fire into Israel.”
“There is a clear and present danger of a wider regional war that drags the Syrian people into its crosshairs,” he said.
Pinheiro cited multiple other ongoing military operations in different parts of Syria by various military groups intent on seizing land, extorting money and other property for personal gain, regardless of the cost.
“Civilians continue to be killed on a daily basis in a senseless war that has left the country economically and politically broken, dramatically eroding the social fabric,” he said.
The United Nations reports that more than 306,000 civilians have been killed in Syria since the civil war erupted in 2011. Some 13.6 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes. While 7.2 million women, men and children are internally displaced within their own country, the civil war has resulted in more than 6.4 million Syrian refugees, mostly in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Germany.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 16.7 million people, or 3 out of 4 people in Syria, are in need of humanitarian assistance. Of these, 13 million face acute food insecurity and more than 650,000 children under the age of 5 are stunted due to severe malnutrition.
“Living conditions are increasingly desperate, and we note the failure of the international community to fund more than a quarter of the UN’s 2024 Humanitarian Response Plan,” Pinheiro said.
“Overall, Syria’s GDP has shrunk by more than half since 2011, a result of the combined effect of destruction of infrastructure and economic networks, forced displacement of more than half the population, predatory practices and rampant corruption.”
More than 13 years into the civil war, Syrians are living through one of the largest and most costly humanitarian crises in the world. OCHA warns that the humanitarian response in Syria remains alarmingly underfunded.
Northwest Syria is now home to 4.2 million people, 80 percent of whom are internally displaced, having fled the war on multiple occasions. Funding shortages have already led to the closure of 110 health facilities there. According to OCHA, half of all health facilities in the northwest will have to cease all or part of their operations by December this year.
The Syria Humanitarian Response Plan 2024 is the largest humanitarian funding appeal ever for a single country. As of September 22, only 26 percent - or $1.04 billion - of the $4.1 billion needed for the humanitarian response has been received.
“The human rights situation will only get worse unless the international community pays renewed attention to the Syria crisis. Member states need to do more on the humanitarian front,“ Pinheiro said.
Some information for this report provided by VOA.
Further information
Full text: Statement by Paulo Pinheiro, Chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic at the 57th Session of the UN Human Rights Council, statement, delivered on September 20, 2024
https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2024/09/statement-paulo-pinheiro-chair-independent-international-commission-inquiry