States Voting for the Syrian Regime Are Fellow Dictatorships That Perpetrate and Support Human Rights Violations
Paris – Syrian Network for Human Rights:
On Wednesday, March 17, 2021, the Human Rights Council (HRC) adopted Resolution 46/22, extending the mandate of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (COI) for a period of one year; the resolution provided for transmitting all reports submitted by the COI to all relevant bodies of the United Nations, and recommended that the General Assembly submit the reports to the Security Council for appropriate action.
The resolution reaffirmed that there can only be a political solution to the conflict in Syria, demanding that all parties work towards a comprehensive, genuine and inclusive political transition based on the Geneva communiqué of June 30, 2012, and Security Council resolution 2254, and calling on the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to resume its work to establish the extent of civilian casualties in Syria, in cooperation with civil society, in order to fully assess the number of people killed as a result of 10 years of conflict.
The resolution was supported by 27 states, while 14 abstained, and six voted against it, namely: Russia, China, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Armenia.
Following the Syrian regime’s atrocious violations in response to the popular uprising for democracy in 2011 since its earliest days, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) urgently intervened, issuing its first resolution almost six weeks after the start of the uprising. This resolution clearly condemned the Syrian regime’s brutal violations and called for the creation of a Fact-Finding Mission. The HRC has subsequently held successive meetings on Syria, some of which have been held periodically and others especially, with the HRC issuing 35 resolutions on the human rights situation in Syria since the beginning of the popular uprising to date, including 12 resolutions regarding the establishment of the Fact-Finding Mission that later became the International Commission of Inquiry, as well as extending its mandate.