SNHR Is a Primary Source for Casualty Data in All Statistical Analyses Issued by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
Paris – Statement by the Syrian Network for Human Rights:
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Michelle Bachelet, announced that 350,209 people have been identified killed in the conflict in Syria between March 2011 to March 2021, including 26,727 women and 27,126 children, noting that the largest number of killings was recorded in Aleppo governorate, followed by Damascus Suburbs, Homs, Idlib, then Hama . This was in an oral update before the Human Rights Council within the meetings of the forty-eighth session of the Council in Geneva on Friday, September 24, 2021.
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued statistical analyzes of the death toll in the conflict in Syria during the first years of the conflict, but it suspended this work, unfortunately, in August 2014, announcing at the time that 191,369 people had died.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has shared all the casualties’ data that SNHR has documented with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights over the past decade, and we have supported its work in analyzing the casualties of the conflict in Syria due to the importance and status of the UNHCHR’s role in drawing international attention to the issue of murder in Syria, and the fact that this unprecedented bloodshed is still continuing, as well as demanding an end to the killings, holding the perpetrators accountable, and working to find a solution to the armed conflict, which has left so many victims of murder, and we believe that all of these issues are at the core of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ remit.
Fadel Abdul Ghany, Director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, says:
“We have repeatedly called for the return of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to focus on analyzing the death toll in Syria after it stopped in August 2014. We greatly welcome its return, which was delayed for seven years, and we pledge to support this role and to continue to provide data. We also hope that the upcoming analyses will include an identification of responsibility for the perpetrators of the crime of killing in Syria, for which the Syrian regime and its allies bear by far the largest percentage of responsibility, around 91%, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights’ database.”
It should be emphasized that the figures issued by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights represent the bare minimum that have been documented, and we believe that the real numbers are far greater. For example, the SNHR’s data indicate that at least 102,793 Syrian citizens are currently subjected to enforced disappearance, with this status meaning we cannot classify them as dead and add their data to that of the victims known to have been killed.