The panelists at the side-event, ‘We know who used chemical weapons in Syria, what is next’, held on the sidelines of the Syria Brussels VII Conference on June 13, 2023
Languages
Available In
The Hague – Syrian Network for Human Rights
On Tuesday, June 13, 2023, Batyna, The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), and the Syrian Civil Defense (White Helmets), held an in-person event entitled, ‘We know who used chemical weapons in Syria, what is next?’.
The event, held on the sidelines of the ‘Brussels VII Conference on Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region’ in Brussels, Belgium, was broadcast on SNHR’s different social media channels. It featured a number of distinguished panelists, namely Ambassador Stephen Rapp of the US Holocaust Museum who is also a former US Ambassador at large for Global Criminal Justice, Mika-Markus Leononen, EU representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Ambassador Fatou Bensouda, a former prosecutor with the International Criminal Court (ICC), Raed al-Salleh, director of The White Helmets, Lubna Kanawati, a member of the Chemical Weapons Victims association, and Fadel Abdul Ghany, SNHR Executive Director, and was moderated by Lotte Leicht, Board Chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR).
The panel tackled the topic of the Syrian regime’s continued impunity for chemical weapons use, despite it having been conclusively proven that chemical weapons have been used repeatedly in Syria, and despite the widespread international disapprobation and the exhaustive documentation efforts by internationally respected bodies, including SNHR , which resulted in the collection of thousands of items of evidence. To that end, the event aimed to assess the option available to tackle the impunity gap.
