Violations of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights in Syria

human rights violation syria

 

International humanitarian law (IHL) and International Human Rights Law (IHRL) strive to protect human life, health and dignity of individuals, prohibit torture or cruel treatment, prescribe basic rights for person’s subject to a criminal justice process, prohibit discrimination, comprise provisions for the protection of women and children, regulate aspects of the right to food and health.  

 

Inexistant Human Rights’ Protections since the Beginning of the Conflict

IHL and IHRL have historically separate development but recent reviews include provisions from both bodies of law. IHL is applicable in armed conflict, whether international or non-international. International conflicts are wars involving two or more states, and wars of liberation, regardless of whether a declaration of war has been made or whether the parties involved recognize that there is a state of war. Non-international armed conflicts are those in which government forces are fighting against armed groups or armed groups are fighting among themselves. IHRL applies at all times, both in peacetime and in situations of armed conflict.

Syria’s human rights situation has rapidly deteriorated since the start of peaceful protests calling for political change in March 2011. When the demonstrations began government forces responded by violently repressing the peaceful protesters. With the subsequent proliferation of non-state armed groups. The situation had evolved into an internal armed conflict by mid-2012. Since then civilians have been caught in the middle as government forces was fighting against armed groups and committing human rights abuses. 

The conflict that caused the largest refugee crisis since World War II and killed over 400,000 people has been littered with violations of international humanitarian law. All parties involved in the Syrian conflict have carried out extensive violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law. In particular, all parties are guilty of targeting civilians, rape and sexual violence have been widely used as a weapon of war.  

 

Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes and Sexual Violence

According the report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (CoI) in 2016 nearly 600,000 civilians in Damascus, countryside of Damascus, Dayr Az-Zawr, Homs and Idlib governorates suffered brutal conditions created by protracted sieges.  Ultimately tens of thousands of civilians suffered from the shortage of food, water, shelter, medical care and other basic needs through the use of this illegal war tactic. 

According a report by CoI in 2012, there are many different crimes against humanity of murder and torture, unlawful killing, indiscriminate attacks against civilian populations and acts of sexual violence, war crimes and gross violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Across Syria, during house searches and at checkpoints, individuals have randomly arrested. In official and unofficial detention centres murder, torture, rape, enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts have taken place.  

In several parts of the country, wide-ranging attacks, including the use of intensive, indiscriminate aerial bombardment and barrel-bombs have conducted. Civilians, particularly fighting-age men, were arrested, detained and in some cases disappeared based on their association or activism. The report of CoI stresses that usage of chlorine and cluster munitions prohibited under international law which was used in the conflict on civilian populated areas of Idlib, Douma, Dayr az-Zawr and Aleppo Governorate between July 2012 and August 2016.  

During the conflict some groups committed murder, torture, arbitrary arrest, hostage-taking, car and suicide bombings, attacks at non-military targets, spread terror among the civilian population and violated the rights of children and forced to participate as fighters and in hostilities as part of armed groups. In some territories the women and girls were excluded from public life and have been killed in some cases often by stoning for unapproved contact with the opposite gender.     

 

About the Author

Usame Yabancı is a Junior Officer in the Third Party Monitoring department at Trust. He has a master degree in International Humanitarian Affairs from the University of York. His main areas of interest are monitoring and evaluation and cash-based assistance.

 

Sources  

Amnesty International, (2016), “It breaks the human” Torture, Disease and Death in Syria’s Prisons.  

Amnesty International, (2017), Syria 2017/2018. 

ICRC, (2003), International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law: Similarities and Differences.  

Idris I., (2017), International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Violations in Syria, University of Birmingham.  

OHCHR, (2012), Syrian Government forces and anti-Government groups responsible for war crimes: UN Commission of Inquiry.  

ONHCR, (2013), UN Commission of Inquiry releases update on Syria 

OHCHR, (2014), UN Commission of Inquiry: Syrian victims reveal ISIS’s calculated use of brutality and indoctrination.  

OHCHR, (2016), Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic as peace talks stall, violence soars once again in Syria – New UN report.  

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