Abandoning and neglecting the victims of the Syrian earthquake

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Geneva –

Failure to provide timely assistance and protection to the victims of the Syrian earthquake has resulted in the deaths of many civilians caught up in this catastrophic disaster, according to the UN-appointed Commission of Inquiry on Syria.

The three-member independent body accuses the Syrian government and other parties to the conflict in that country, the international community and the United Nations of abandoning millions of Syrian civilians who desperately need it.

“Syrians have felt, with good reason, abandoned and neglected by those who were supposed to protect them in the most desperate times of their time,” said Paulo Pinheiro, chair of the commission. “Many days were lost without any help for the earthquake survivors, who became a hotbed of neglect.”

FILE – Paulo Pinheiro, chair of the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, attends a press conference at the United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland, September 6, 2017.

He said the warring parties failed to agree on an immediate suspension of hostilities in northwestern Syria and “failed to allow and facilitate life-saving assistance to the victims through any available route.”

According to Reuters, the Syrian Ministry of Information did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Pinheiro said the commission is investigating new attacks, even in earthquake-ravaged areas, including “the reported Israeli attack last week on Aleppo International Airport, which is a conduit for humanitarian aid.”

Prior to the earthquake, humanitarian aid was mainly arriving in Idlib in northwest Syria via a single transit point from Turkey. The Syrian government in Damascus needed a full week after the earthquake to allow the opening of two additional border crossings for the delivery of life-saving aid, including allowing rescue teams and equipment.

Committee member Hani Megally accused the armed groups of deliberately obstructing humanitarian aid from crossing these lines. Meanwhile, he said, the United Nations and the international community seemed paralyzed during the initial stages of relief efforts.

He said they could have acted more quickly in getting much-needed assistance to the victims than waiting a week to let Damascus in.

FILE – A United Nations aid convoy enters rebel-held northwest Syria from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa crossing on February 9, 2023, the first since the devastating earthquake on February 6 that killed thousands.

“This was an earthquake. It was an exceptional circumstance,” he said. “Legal scholars will argue that in exceptional circumstances, you can act even if it means crossing borders or trampling on state sovereignty, so to speak.”

His colleague, Lynn Welshman, noted that the Syrian government has a duty to allow impartial humanitarian access without waiting for a Security Council resolution to force it.

“But due to the imbalance of the Security Council, it has become impossible to avoid the political brinksmanship in the Security Council on this issue, which comes at the cost of civilian lives and well-being,” she said.

The commission is calling for a full, independent investigation and accountability to understand how this systemic failure to support the millions of people in desperate need came about.

The committee released its latest report on the Syrian crisis just days before the country entered its thirteenth year of civil conflict. The report, which was prepared before last month’s earthquake, summarizes the violations committed against civilians during the second half of last year.

It has documented growing insecurity in government-controlled areas, with people subjected to arbitrary imprisonment, torture and ill-treatment, and enforced disappearance. It is reported that civilians living in the quake-affected northwest region have been particularly vulnerable to deadly attacks in the previous months.

In November, the report found that Syrian government forces used cluster munitions, which are banned under international law. It said these weapons struck densely populated displacement camps in Idlib, the last remaining opposition stronghold in Syria, killing and wounding 67 people.

FILE – Traces of bombing are seen in the Maram camp in the Syrian Idlib governorate on November 6, 2022. Syrian government forces bombed tents housing families displaced by the conflict in the country.

The report documented the killing and maiming of civilians by unguided missiles and airstrikes launched by Russian forces in August and July in the city of Al-Bab, northeastern Aleppo.

“These and other atrocities that we investigated continue a long-established pattern of indiscriminate attacks, which may amount to war crimes,” Pinheiro said.

The three-member committee deplores the illegal detention by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces of 56,000 people, mostly women and children, in the Al-Hol and Roj camps in northeastern Syria.

The committee said they were being held in conditions that “appear to constitute cruel and inhuman treatment” and in a state of legal limbo. It is reported that about 10,000 wives and children suspected of links to ISIS militants are being held in separate detention camps.

“The suffering they are subjected to may amount to the war crime of outrages upon personal dignity,” Pinheiro said.

UN investigators are calling on countries to expedite the repatriation of their nationals.

They are also calling for the establishment of an independent international body to help search for the whereabouts and fate of the thousands of people who went missing in this civil war.

They noted that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will brief the General Assembly on the issue of missing persons in Syria later this month.

“We hope that this will now lead to concrete action on this without further delay,” Pinheiro said.

The report will be submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council next week.

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