UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : HRC57 - Human Rights in Syria

It is my pleasure to welcome the members of the Commissions, Mr Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, Mrs Lynn Welchman and Mr Hani Megali.

I now invite you, Mr Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, to present the report.

You have the floor, Sir.

Merci.

Mr.

President, before I deliver my introductory remarks, let me express our deep consternation and extreme frustration for not being able to engage with you fully in the ID now or on Monday morning when the ID resumes.

Our Geneva schedule was planned on the assumption that you to be concluded today.

We think it is unbefitting of the intense gravity of the situation in Syria today that our in person engagement with the Council has in effect being reduced to this my opening remarks that I began to present to you.

As world attention and resources shift toward the other grave political humanitarian crisis, Syria descends further in a quagmire of misery and despair, multiple failures and missed opportunities.

We have seen 13 years of internal armed conflict brought about by the senior states violent and repressive response to peaceful demonstrations.

Our report documents arbitrary detentions with state officials continuing to forcibly disappear, torture or and I'll treat detainees in their custody.

Despite the IC JS order in November last year that Syria sees torture online, activists and journalists are detained, often incommunicado, for criticising the government.

Officials and intermediaries demand bribes from family members who seek to contact or visit detained family members, or to get them released, or even just to obtain information on their whereabouts.

The failure of the state to change its ways is compounded by the failure of Ahmed known state actors that control Syrian territory to forge a different approach to governance, one that protects basic rights and freedoms.

In the northwest of the country, HTS and some factions of the SNA continue to detain, torture and disappear civilians and those perceived as political opponents, while at the same time political activists detained by the SDF in North East Syria.

In the North East, 10s of thousands of women and children remain trapped in camps in cruel and, you know, main conditions.

They include Yazidi women and children.

Ten years after the Yazidi genocide, beyond the state and no state Ahmed groups, we note the appalling failure of the Global coalition against Daesh that has been present in Syria since 2014.

Ten years ago.

Daesh attacks in Syria this year are reportedly on course to double compared to the year 2023.

Alongside the stolid peace process, efforts by the international community to bring the conflict to an end have also failed.

Fighting has intensified along multiple front lines, taking a heavy toll on civilians in incidents in the northwest of the country.

At least 100, 50 civilians, half of their women and children, were killed and injured by government forces, the vast majority indiscriminate ground attacks near frontline villages and towns.

In Dehra Zoo, there has been a resurgence of violence, with government forces now backing a coalition of tribal fighters against the SDF.

In just one week in early August, 65 civilians were reportedly killed or injured in attacks along the banks of the Ofreitz River.

Fighting displaced thousands of families, destroyed civilian property and hamper humanitarian assistance with reports of civilian infrastructure including water stations and schools used for military operations.

Tensions between the SDF and SNA fighters have intensified in northern Aleppo with mutual shelling and cross line assaults and renew reports of civilian casualties by vehicle bone IED attacks in July and August.

In central Syria, we see increasing armoured attacks, kidnapping and use of IEID, reportedly by Daesh.

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 of the country.

While people strive to maintain their dignity amidst daily challenges, they are forced to navigate predatory practises by local security forces and factions across the country, ranging from distortion at checkpoints to confiscation of land and properties and kidnapping or arbitrary detention.

Living conditions are increasingly desperate, and the international community failed to fund more than 1/4 of the United Nations 2024 humanitarian response plan.

Just to shock you, I repeat not more than 1/4 of the UN's 2024 humanitarian response plan.

Northwest Syria is now home to 4.2 million people, of whom 80% IID PS:.

Having fled war multiple times by now, their funding shortage have already shut down 100 health facilities.

ORCHA has warned that half or for all health facilities in Syria will have to fully or partially cease operations by this December, severely affecting mostly women and children living in tents faced with illness resulting from water shortage and pool sanitation.

In the North East, an already severe water, fuel and electricity crisis has been compounded by strikes on civilian infrastructure.

Malnutrition rates have risen dramatically, including among young children.

Overall, serious GDP has shrank by more than half since 2000 level, a result of the combined effect of destruction of infrastructure and economic networks forced the displacement of more than half of the Syrian population.

Predatory practise and rampant corruption.

While elites steam shelter from the prolonged humanitarian and economic crisis, we are concerned that sanctions further deep and serious economic abyss and aggravate already dire living conditions of the civilian population, particularly sectoral sanctions.

This is particularly urgent as humanitarian funding has increasingly dwindle of the last few years and the humanitarian response plan, as I mentioned, is severely underfunded.

I think this is an understatement.

Undefunded.

The heightened regional tensions is stemming from the conflict in Palestine have led to intensify Israeli air strikes and last week a raid into Syria targeting Iranian officials and militias across Syria, causing civilian casualties.

And on at least three occasions, Iranian affiliate groups and the US have step separate back attacks on each other in north Syria since the start of the Gaza war.

In recent months you have been alerted to the dangers to the system of international law itself if the Member states charged with upholding it are seeing to fully failing in this obligation.

We are truly shocked that there has been no worldwide condemnation of the simultaneous widespread attacks using handheld devices that have this week terrorised the people in Lebanon and resulted in thousands of casualties, including in Syria.

Excellence, I'm almost concluding it should amaze you that Syrians across the country still resort to protests in the streets.

Most recently we have seen protests against the HES in the northwest, against the SNA in the north, against the SDF in the northeast and against the government.

It's a veda.

This protest should spur us to overcome the failures I have lighted.

Non state actors in control of territory need to focus on why the Syrian people rose up in 2011 and began to systematically address the real and ongoing grievance and indeed the aspirations of the people.

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.

The Syrian people deserve to live in dignity, exercising their fundamental rights and freedoms.

They look to this Council to help to help them get there.

I thank you, dear Mr Pinheiro, together with members of the Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria, for presenting your report.

The Secretariat.

I would like to stress that he's working hard to guarantee your participation on the resuming of the our discussion on your report.

On next Monday now.

I, I take Mccarry message.

Saffir, Surya, come on.

I now give the floor to Syria as a concerned country.

Thank you, Mr.

President, It is well known that mandates imposed by certain countries without the consent or consultation of the concerned country are nothing but tools designed to implement specific agendas that have nothing to do with protecting and promoting human rights.

Today's meeting and the mandate of the so-called Commission of Inquiry are a flagrant example of this.

Ironically, while these countries speak about the need to rationalise the work of the Council, and while the UN is suffering from an unprecedented liquidity crisis, the same countries are imposing on the Council more and more expansion of such mandates, interactive dialogues and politicised reports, and prefer to stop the most urgent humanitarian programmes rather than limiting these mandates despite not providing any added value, and rather always produce counterproductive results.

What's the benefit of such mandates when we are faced with a Commission of inquiry whose task is not to investigate but establish the misleading Western narrative on the situation in Syria?

Yes, this Commission has succeeded honesty and sincerely in implementing what is requested by the Western countries.

Regrettably, though, it has betrayed the principles of impartiality, objectivity, independence and transparency.

No objective observer can ignore the serious professional flaws in its work and reports and its total failure to approach the real challenges facing Syria.

What is the benefit of such interactive dialogues, which are neither dialogues nor interactive?

As we know in advance that we will listen on Monday to abhorrent can't statements from some Western countries which contain politicisation, hypocrisy and distortion of facts.

As for claims to protect human rights, they fall resoundingly before the test of truth and reality.

For example, in the statements of these countries, we will not hear anything about the real danger of terrorist groups, nor about the violations of human rights and IHL committed by the illegal foreign forces present on Syrian territory.

It is obvious that these countries will not condemn themselves by addressing the impacts of Ucms on the humanitarian situation and their violation of the basic rights of the Syrian people.

Of course, it would not be surprising if these countries ignored the serious and systematic violations committed by the Israeli occupation forces against Israel against Syria.

Sorry, as they provide justifications, cover and support for these violations and they also support the genocide against the Palestinian people.

As Syria renews its position of not recognising the mandate of the Commission and the resolutions it established and rejects its reports in their entirety, we will continue our cooperation and constructive interaction with countries that truly believe in human rights on an equal footing and based on dialogue and cooperation.

In line with the genuine mandate of the Council, we reaffirm our commitment to continue efforts to promote and protect human rights for all our people without discrimination.

In conclusion, Mr.

President, the right path to effectively promote and protect human rights in Syria does not require bankrupt mandates, misleading reports or heinous manipulation of the suffering of the Syrian people.

Rather, it primarily required supporting the Government's efforts, helping to build its capacities in accordance with its national priorities and ending all illegal practises against Syria and addressing the real challenges and devastating impacts that these practises leave on the Syrian people.

I thank you.

HRC57 - Human Rights in Syria - 20 September 2024