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Outlines twenty years of human rights abuses in Syria under the rule of President Hafez Asad, providing details of imprisonment without trial, torture, and other forms of opression.
The Syrian war has been an example of the abuse and insufficient delivery of humanitarian assistance. According to international practice, humanitarian aid should be channelled through a state government that bears a particular responsibility for its population. Yet in Syria, the bulk of relief went through Damascus while the regime caused the vast majority of civilian deaths. Should the UN have severed its cooperation with the government and neglected its humanitarian duty to help all people in need? Decision-makers face these tough policy dilemmas, and often the “neutrality trap” snaps shut. This book discusses the political and moral considerations of how to respond to a brutal and complex crisis while adhering to international law and practice. The author, a scholar and senior diplomat involved in the UN peace talks in Geneva, draws from first-hand diplomatic, practitioner and UN sources. He sheds light on the UN's credibility crisis and the wider implications for the development of international humanitarian and human rights law. This includes covering the key questions asked by Western diplomats, NGOs and international organizations, such as: Why did the UN not confront the Syrian government more boldly? Was it not only legally correct but also morally justifiable to deliver humanitarian aid to regime areas where rockets were launched and warplanes started? Why was it so difficult to render cross-border aid possible where it was badly needed? The meticulous account of current international practice is both insightful and disturbing. It tackles the painful lessons learnt and provides recommendations for future challenges where politics fails and humanitarians fill the moral void.
"Ten years after succeeding his father as president of Syria, Bashar al-Asad has liberalized parts of his country's economy, but has not delivered on his promises to increase public freedoms or improve the government's human rights record. Ordinary Syrians continue to risk jail merely for criticizing their president, writing a blog, or protesting government policies. This report reviews Bashar al-Asad's human rights record in five key areas: repression of political and human rights activism; restrictions on freedom of expression; torture; treatment of Kurds; and addressing Syria's legacy of enforced disappearances. The assessment is bleak. Without reform in these five areas, al-Asad's rule merely extends that of his father: government by repression."--P. [4] of cover.
In the early 1980's, Syria's powerful army and prevasive security apparatus crushed opposition to the regime of Hafez Asad with great violence, killing at least 10,000 citizens and jailing thousands more. This report charges that in the intervening years, the government's respect for fundamental human rights has barely improved.
"The governorate of Homs has emerged as the center of the anti-government movement in Syria. As in other parts of the country, security services responded violently to anti-government protests, killing at least 587 individuals in Homs from mid-April to the end of August 2011, the highest number of casualties for any single governorate. Based on 114 interviews with Homs residents, this report documents attacks on protesters, arbitrary detentions, torture of detainees, and deaths in custody, and scrutinizes the human rights cost of the sweeping military operations in Tal Kalakh, Homs City, and Rastan. It also examines the government's claims of use of force by protesters. The report analyses the weak response of the international community and recommends the deployment of civilian monitors to inhibit the use of force by security forces."--P. [4] cover.
Focused on the international community's response to the conflict in Syria, this is a book about the inexorable quest for justice, even in the face of seemingly impenetrable obstacles erected by actors intent on ensuring impunity. It features a number of creative ideas emerging from states and civil society actors intent on pursuing justice for atrocities in Syria
This book offers a novel and contemporary examination of the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) doctrine from an international legal perspective and analyses how the doctrine was applied within the Libyan and Syrian conflicts as two recent and highly significant R2P cases. The book dissects each of R2P’s three component pillars to examine their international legal underpinnings, drawing upon diverse legal frameworks – including the laws of the UN, laws of international organisations, human rights law, humanitarian law, criminal law, environmental law, and laws of State responsibility – to extract conclusions regarding existing and emerging host and third-State obligations to prevent and react to mass atrocity crimes. It uses this legal grounding to critically examine specific aspects of the Libyan and Syrian R2P cases, engaging with some of the more traditional debates surrounding R2P’s application, most notably those that pertain to the use of force (or lack thereof), but also exploring some of the less-researched non-military methods that were or could have been employed by States and international organisations to uphold the doctrine. Such an analysis captures the diversity in the means and actors through which R2P can be implemented and allows for the extraction of more nuanced conclusions regarding the doctrine’s strengths and limitations, gaps in enforceability, levels of State support, and future trajectory. The book will be of interest to scholars and students in the field of international law and human rights law.
This book explores, through the lens of the conflict in Syria, why international law and the United Nations have failed to halt conflict and massive human rights violations in many places around the world which has allowed tens of millions of people to be killed and hundreds of millions more to be harmed. The work presents a critical socio-legal analysis of the failures of international law and the United Nations (UN) to deal with mass atrocities and conflict. It argues that international law, in the way it is set up and operates, falls short in dealing with these issues in many respects. The argument is that international law is state-centred rather than victim-friendly, is, to some extent, outdated, is vague and often difficult to understand and, therefore, at times, hard to apply. While various accountability processes have come to the fore recently, processes do not exist to assist individual victims while the conflict occurs or the abuses are being perpetrated. The book focuses on the problems of international law and the UN and, in the context of the many enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions in Syria, why nothing has been done to deal with a rogue state that has regularly violated international law. It examines why the responsibility to protect (R2P) has not been applied and why it ought to be used, generally, and in Syria. It uses the Syrian context to evaluate the weaknesses of the system and why reform is needed. It examines the UN institutional mechanisms, the role they play and why a civilian protection system is needed. It examines what mechanism ought to be set up to deal with the possible one million people who have been disappeared and detained in Syria. The book will be a valuable resource for students, academics and policy-makers working in the areas of public international law, international human rights law, political science and peace and security studies.
Note on Methodology -- I. Timeline of Protest and Repression in Syria -- II. Crimes against Humanity and Other Violations in Daraa -- Systematic killings of protestors and bystanders -- Killings during attack on al-Omari mosque and protests that followed, March 23-25, 2011 -- Killings during two protests on April 8, 2011 -- Killings during a protest and a funeral procession in Izraa, April 22-23, 2011 -- Killings during the siege of Daraa and neighboring villages and April 29 protest -- Other incidents of killings in and around Daraa -- Allegations of violence by protesters -- Denial of medical assistance -- Arbitrary arrests, "disappearances" and torture -- Large-scale sweep operations -- Torture and ill-treatment in detention -- Targeted arrests and "disappearances" -- Executions and mass graves -- Effect of the siege -- Information blockade -- Recommendations -- To the Syrian Government -- To the UN Security Council -- To the UN Human Rights Council -- To United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon -- To the Arab League -- Acknowledgments.
The current conflict in Syria has killed more than 80,000 people and displaced four million, yet most observers predict that the worst is still to come. And for two years, the international community has failed to take action. World leaders have repeatedly resolved not to let atrocities happen in plain view, but the legacy of the bloody and costly intervention in Iraq has left policymakers with little appetite for more military operations. So we find ourselves in the grip of a double burden: the urge to stop the bleeding in Syria, and the fear that attempting to do so would be Iraq redux. What should be done about the apparently intractable Syrian conflict? This book focuses on the ethical and political dilemmas at the heart of the debate about Syria and the possibility of humanitarian intervention in today's world. The contributors--Syria experts, international relations theorists, human rights activists, and scholars of humanitarian intervention--don't always agree, but together they represent the best political thinking on the issue. The Syria Dilemma includes original pieces from Michael Ignatieff, Mary Kaldor, Radwan Ziadeh, Thomas Pierret, Afra Jalabi, and others. Contributors: Asli Bâli, Richard Falk, Tom Farer, Charles Glass, Shadi Hamid, Nader Hashemi, Christopher Hill, Michael Ignatieff, Afra Jalabi, Rafif Jouejati, Mary Kaldor, MarcLynch, Vali Nasr, Thomas Pierret, Danny Postel, Aziz Rana, Christoph Reuter, Kenneth Roth, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Fareed Zakaria, Radwan Ziadeh, Stephen Zunes