Homs Neighbourhood
For nearly ten years, Syria has been witnessing a wave of flagrant violations and crimes of human rights, which in many aspects have reached unprecedented record levels in the world, and was one of the harshest Syria and the region have ever known in their history. These violations have led to the killing of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, and the arrest and vanishing of tens of thousands, about half of the Syrians were displaced from their homes, hundreds of thousands of them were permanently injured and disabled, and millions of them were affected by psychological effects that they may not be able to get rid of throughout their lives.
Despite the scale of these violations in time, geography and scope, they were ranked low on the priorities of all international actors, as political and economic interests overwhelmed the human rights issue, and the victims and their rights were turned into neglected data even by the United Nations itself.
In addition to the disregard shown by the international parties towards the violations committed by the regime since 2011 until today, the actual ruling bodies in the opposition areas and the areas of the Kurdish Autonomous Administration did not show a clear respect for human rights, and these authorities continued to practice systematic violations of the rights of citizens under their authority and did not provide a positive example in this field.
The conditions left by the years of war contributed to deepening the level of violations experienced by the Syrian citizens, as the economic conditions and widespread corruption in the regime’s system pushed most Syrians living under its rule below the poverty line, at a time when commodity prices increased sharply in an unprecedented way.
Refugees and internally displaced persons in the camps suffer from an acute shortage of humanitarian aid, in light of the scarcity of international contributions, which reached their lowest level since 2011.
This deliberate neglect on the part of the international community for the suffering of Syrians and past violations of their rights, ignoring the current facts that contribute to complicating the level of violations they are experiencing, and the continuous push towards a political solution that does not include transitional justice or accountability for the perpetrators, but rather provides a recipe for the perpetuation of instability in Syria for decades to come. And it pushes generations of Syrians towards extremism in all its forms and resentment towards local and international systems of government alike.
The Syrian Human Rights Committee (SHRC), while observing the International Human Rights Day, affirms that protecting these rights is not in the interest of the victims alone, but rather forms a pillar for building a stable and normal society. It also affirms that trying to overcome the violations that have occurred and seeking to give the perpetrators an opportunity to escape of equity cannot lead to a viable sustainable solution.
Syrian Human Rights Committee
10/12/2020