With no end in sight, the conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic continues to intensify, subjecting civilians of all backgrounds to crimes against humanity and war crimes, a group of UN experts warned today. These transgressions, which include gross human rights violations, are massive in extent and scope.
In its latest report, the UN commission of inquiry on Syria calls for urgent action to be taken to ensure effective protection of the Syrian people. This report, the Commission’s tenth to the Human Rights Council, charts the major trends and patterns in which combatants have targeted civilian communities, groups and individuals and subjected them to international human rights and humanitarian law violations. It draws on more than 335 interviews with victims and eyewitnesses in and outside the country, collected from January to July 2015.
The report emphasises the need for concerted and sustained international action to find a political solution to end the violence and to stop the rampancy of war crimes and grave violations of human rights. Such action would necessarily include measures to break the seemingly intractable cycle of impunity.