Approximately 1,472 Victims Killed and 9,989 Injured in 222 Chemical Attacks, 217 of Which Were Carried Out by the Syrian Regime
BY: Getty
In the last decade, no people in the world has suffered from the use of chemical weapons as much as Syrians, who have watched their children die in unspeakable agony of suffocation, generating an unimaginable fear and terror feeling among them. The Syrian regime has used its stockpile of weapons since the early days of the popular uprising for democracy in Syria in March 2011, gradually increasing its deployment of various weapons and carefully monitoring the reaction – or lack of reaction – from the international community, until it felt safe to use its stockpile of chemical weapons of mass destruction due to the Security Council’s and the rest of the world’s indifferent attitude, almost that of a bystander, towards the Syrian regime committing crimes against humanity, in flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and the rules of customary international humanitarian law.
Tomorrow marks the International Day of Remembrance for All Victims of Chemical Warfare, adopted by the Conference of the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention at its 20th session in 2015. The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) uses this occasion to remind the United Nations that the greatest threat and the most prolific user of chemical weapons on the planet, the Syrian regime and the ruling family in Syria, are still at large, and have not been held accountable for the crime of using chemical weapons despite this use being repeatedly proven by various UN bodies and international human rights organizations, as well as by the SNHR database of chemical weapons incidents. This indicates a catastrophic failure on behalf of the United Nations, primarily the Security Council, undermining the efforts of international law, entrenching frustration and loss of hope and invariably helping to nurture a climate of extremism and intolerance.
Since December 23, 2012, the Syrian regime has continued to regularly and routinely use chemical weapons against civilians; moreover, its research centers have continued to develop these munitions despite the regime’s accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention in September 2013, with this deployment clearly seen through repeated chemical attacks in different areas in Syria, reaching according to the SNHR database at least 184 attacks following UN Security Council Resolution 2118 of September 2013, according to which Syria acceded to the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, until our last documented attack in al Kbaina village in Latakia suburbs on May 19, 2019.