We Documented the Deaths of 18 Civilians, Including 16 Children, Due to Mines in the First Month of 2021
Press release:
(Link below to download full report)
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) announced in its monthly report released today that extrajudicial killing claimed the lives of 113 civilians, including 36 children, six women, and three victims due to torture, in Syria in January 2021, with the report further noting that 18 civilians, including 16 children, were killed as a result of mines during the same period.
The 19-page report states that the crime of murder has become widespread and systematic, mainly at the hands of Syrian regime forces and affiliated militias, adding that the entry of several parties into the Syrian conflict has increased the importance and complexity of documenting the victims killed in Syria.
The report notes that since 2011, the SNHR has created complex electronic programs to archive and categorize the victims’ data, enabling the SNHR to catalogue victims according to the gender and location where each was killed, the governorate from which each victim originally came, and the party responsible for the killing, and to make comparisons between these parties, and identify the governorates which lost the largest proportion of residents. The report catalogues the death toll of victims according to the governorate in which they were killed, rather than by the governorate they originally came from.
This report records the death toll of victims documented killed by the parties to the conflict and the controlling forces in Syria in January 2021, particularly focusing on the victims amongst children and women, and those who died due to torture.
As the report reveals, deaths among Syrian citizens caused by landmine explosions in different governorates and regions in Syria continued in 2021, with January seeing the deaths of 18 victims, including 16 children, caused by landmines, indicating that none of the controlling forces have made any significant efforts in the process of clearing landmines, or trying to determine their locations and fence them off, or warn the local population about them.
As the report further reveals, the statistics provided for the death toll of victims include those related to extrajudicial killings by the controlling forces in each area which occurred as a violation of both International Human Rights Law or International Humanitarian Law, and do not include deaths arising from natural causes or those caused by disputes between individual members of society.
The report includes the distribution of the death toll of victims according to the perpetrator parties, noting that accurately ascribing responsibility sometimes requires more time and investigation than usual, especially in the case of joint attacks. In addition, in cases where it’s unable to definitively assign responsibility for a particular killing to one of two possible parties because of the area’s proximity to the lines of engagement, the use of similar weapons, or other reasons, the incident is categorized among ‘other parties’ until sufficient evidence is available to conclusively assign responsibility for the violation to one of the two parties.
The report notes that there is great difficulty in determining the party that planted landmines, due to the multiplicity of forces controlling the areas in which these explosions occurred, and therefore we do not attribute the vast majority of killings due to landmines to a specific party. None of the perpetrator forces in the Syrian conflict have revealed maps of the places where they planted landmines.
The report draws upon the ongoing daily monitoring of news and developments, and on an extensive network of relations with various sources, in addition to analyzing a large number of photographs and videos.
As the report reveals, extrajudicial killings continued with the beginning of 2021, as the Syrian Network for Human Rights documented the deaths of 113 civilians, including 36 children and six women (adult female), killed at the hands of the parties to the conflict and the controlling forces in Syria. The report explains that there is no doubt that the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, whose emergence in Syria was announced on March 22, 2020, has had a significant impact on reducing bombardment operations against civilians, and consequently decreasing the death toll, as the pandemic has contributed to weakening the capabilities of the Syrian regime’s army and affiliated Iranian militias, with the Russian-Turkish ceasefire agreement that came into effect on the 6th of the same month – March 2020 – also playing a part in lowering the death toll.
As the report explains, the SNHR’s Victim Documentation team documented the deaths of 113 civilians, including 36 children and six women (adult female) in January. This figure is broken down according to the perpetrators in each case, with 17 of the civilian victims, including six children and two women, killed at the hands of Syrian regime forces, one civilian killed at the hands of Syrian Democratic Forces, and three civilians, all children, killed at the hands of Hay’at Tahrir al Sham. In addition, the report documents the deaths of 92 civilians, including 27 children and four women, at the hands of other parties.
Also in January 2021, as the report reveals, the SNHR’s working team documented the deaths of three victims due to torture, all at the hands of Syrian regime forces.
The report states that the Syrian regime bears the primary responsibility for the deaths of Syrian citizens due to the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that the Syrian regime and its Russian ally have repeatedly been documented as having targeted, bombed and destroyed most medical facilities in Syria, and killed hundreds of medical personnel, according to the SNHR’s database, with dozens of these lifesaving medics being still classified as forcibly disappeared at the regime’s hands, noting that nearly 3,327 medical personnel are still detained or forcibly disappeared by the Syrian regime.
The report notes that it does not include all deaths, including those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, as the report mainly documents extrajudicial killings, further noting that the Syrian regime’s Ministry of Health has announced the deaths of 911 cases in Syria due to the COVID-19, describing this statistic as inaccurate, given the absence of any transparency in the various government ministries, and in view of the supervision of the security services on what is issued by these ministries, which is the case with totalitarian regimes.
As the report notes, the evidence collected by SNHR indicates that the attacks documented were directed against civilians and civilian objects. Syrian-Russian alliance forces have committed various crimes ranging from extrajudicial killings to detention, torture and enforced disappearance. Their attacks and indiscriminate bombardment have resulted in the destruction of facilities and buildings. The report notes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the war crime of attacking civilians has been committed in many cases.
The report stresses that the Syrian government has violated international humanitarian law and customary law, and all UN Security Council resolutions, particularly resolution 2139, resolution 2042, and resolution 2254, all without any accountability.
As the report also notes, Hay’at Tahrir al Sham has violated international humanitarian law by killing civilians, while Syrian Democratic Forces carried out attacks that are considered violations of international humanitarian law, with the crimes of indiscriminate killing amounting to war crimes.
The report adds that the use of explosive arms to target densely populated areas reflects a criminal and wholly deliberate mentality intended to inflict the greatest possible number of deaths, which is a clear contravention of international human rights law and a flagrant violation of the four Geneva Convention (articles 27, 31, 32).
The report calls on the Security Council to take additional steps following its adoption of Resolution 2254, and stresses the importance of referring the Syrian case to the International Criminal Court, adding that all those who are responsible should be held accountable including the Russian regime whose involvement in war crimes has been repeatedly proven.
The report also requests that all relevant United Nations agencies make greater efforts to provide food, medical and humanitarian assistance in areas where fighting has ceased, and in internally displaced persons’ camps, and to follow up with those States that have pledged voluntary contributions.
The report calls for the implementation of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ after all political channels have proved fruitless through all agreements, the Cessation of Hostilities statements, and Astana agreements that followed, stressing the need to resort to Chapter VII, and implement the norm of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’, which was established by the United Nations General Assembly.
The report recommends that the international community should work to launch projects to create maps revealing the locations of landmines and cluster munitions in all Syrian governorates. This would facilitate the process of clearing them and educating the population about their locations.
The report calls on the Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) and the International, Impartial, and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) to launch investigations into the cases included in this report and previous reports, and confirms the SNHR’s willingness to cooperate and provide further evidence and data, with the report calling them on to focus on the issue of landmines and cluster munitions within the next report.
The report also calls on the United Nations Special Envoy to Syria to condemn the perpetrators of crimes and massacres and those who were primarily responsible for dooming the de-escalation agreements to failure, to re-sequence the peace process so that it can resume its natural course despite Russia’s attempts to divert and distort it, empowering the Constitutional Committee prior to the establishment of a transitional governing body.
The report emphasizes that the Russian regime must launch investigations into the incidents included in this report, make the findings of these investigations public for the Syrian people, and hold the people involved accountable, as well as demanding that the Russian regime, as a guarantor party in Astana talks, should stop thwarting de-escalation agreements.
The report also stresses that the Syrian regime must stop the indiscriminate shelling and targeting residential areas, hospitals, schools and markets, as well as ending the acts of torture that have caused the deaths of thousands of Syrian citizens in detention centers, and complying with UN Security Council resolutions and customary humanitarian law.
The report stresses that the states supporting the SDF should apply pressure on these forces in order to compel them to cease all of their violations in all the areas and towns under their control, adding that all forms of support, military and all others, should be ceased unless the SDF stops all its violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law.
The report calls on the Armed Opposition and Syrian National Army to ensure the protection of civilians in all areas under their control, and urges them to investigate incidents that have resulted in civilian casualties, as well as calling on them to take care to distinguish between civilians and military targets and to cease any indiscriminate attacks.
Lastly, the report stresses the need for humanitarian organizations to develop urgent operational plans to secure decent shelter for internally displaced persons, and to exert efforts in landmine clearance operations in parallel with relief operations whenever the opportunity arises, as well as making several additional recommendations.