SNHR’s Fourth Periodic Monitoring Report Proves the Syrian Regime’s Violation of the ICJ’s Order, Calling on the Court to Conduct an Official Evaluation of the Regime’s Compliance
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The Hague – The Syrian Network for Human Rights:
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) today released its fourth periodic monitoring report on the one-year anniversary of the issuance of the Order by the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) on November 16, 2023. The Order was issued in response to a case brought before the ICJ by Canada and the Netherlands against the Syrian Arab Republic. The report stresses that the Syrian regime has killed 84 individuals through torture and arrested 1,161 civilians, including 18 children and 43 women, in the year since the ICJ Order was issued.
The 23-page report finds that that the Syrian regime had failed to take any actual action to end torture, nor has it taken any action whatsoever to comply with the ICJ Order’s requirements. On the contrary, the humanitarian situation in Syria has only grown more dire since the ICJ Order was issued due to the regime’s practices, including arbitrary arrest, torture, and enforced disappearance, in addition to its amnesty policies that consistently exclude political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, and the recent government selections with figures implicated in crimes against humanity being appointed to senior government positions.
On the subject of arbitrary arrests, the report documents 1,161 arbitrary arrests at the hands of Syrian regime forces, including those of 18 children and 43 women, with all those detained being held in various regime detention centers since the ICJ Order was issued on November 16, 2023, up until November 16, 2024. Of the 1,161 people arrested, only 138 have been released, while the remaining 1,023 have subsequently been categorized as enforced disappearance cases. In other words, 88 percent of all people arrested in that period have subsequently been categorized as forcibly disappeared persons. This staggeringly high percentage suggests a systematic targeting of civilians, returning activists, and refugees, and further restrictions on freedom of opinion and expression, in addition to expanded arbitrary arrests on the ground of the Counter Cybercrime Act and military service laws.
As for torture, the report documents at least 84 deaths due to torture in regime detention centers, including those of 26 children, from the date of the ICJ Order being issued on November 16, 2023, up until November 16, 2024. In other words, 31 percent of all victims documented as dying due to torture were children. Only seven of the bodies of victims who died due to torture in this period have been returned to their families, while the overwhelming majority (about 91.67 percent) have not been returned, which again underlines the regime’s continuing enforced disappearance policy. Also among these victims were six former refugees who had voluntarily returned or been forcibly repatriated to regime-held areas, after which they were detained and subsequently died due to torture or medical negligence, accounting for about seven percent of the total. These figures provide further confirmation that torture is still being carried out in a systematic way in regime detention centers, with increasing numbers of children also being targeted. Meanwhile, the limited number of victims’ bodies that have been returned to the families highlights the regime’s continued use of enforced disappearance of victims as a policy.
Since the start of 2024, the report adds, SNHR has been able to obtain death certificates for newly discovered enforced disappearance cases that had not previously been publicly disclosed, which suggests that the Syrian regime is sending newly released information about forcibly disappeared persons to the civil registry offices to register their deaths, regardless of when the deaths took place. In the year between November 16, 2023, and November 16, 2024, SNHR documented the regime’s registration in the civil registry records of the deaths of no fewer than 43 people who had previously been documented as forcibly disappeared, including 26 children. In these cases, the cause of death was not provided, and the Syrian regime has not returned any of the victims’ bodies to their families and did not notify the families of their loved ones’ deaths at the time they took place. Among these cases are victims from the same families, political activists, and university students. Moreover, the Syrian regime has promulgated two legislative decrees providing for general amnesty in the year since the ICJ Order was issued on November 16, 2023, namely Legislative Decree No. 36 of 2023 and Legislative Decree No. 27 of 2024. However, arbitrarily arrested detainees and forcibly disappeared persons were explicitly excluded from amnesty in both cases. Meanwhile, despite the promulgation of two amnesty decrees, the regime continues to carry out arbitrary arrests, in which those detained, including women and children, are imprisoned in regime detention centers, and to routinely subject all detainees to torture. As the data recorded by SNHR suggests, these amnesty decrees have had no tangible effects with respect to limiting arbitrary arrests. That is to say, arbitrary arrests have continued at their usual high rates following the promulgation of each of the two decrees, with the same applying to torture, with 53 deaths due to torture documented between the promulgation of the first and second decrees, and 31 following the promulgation of the second decree up until November 16, 2024.
As the report further notes, even though the Syrian regime continues committing grave human rights violations, including extrajudicial killing, torture, and enforced disappearance, it still found it appropriate to hold elections for the People’s Assembly of Syria on July 15, 2024. Thes elections saw many nominees who were involved in human rights violations. Even worse, many of the individuals declared winners are even heads of pro-regime militias who were directly involved in military and security operations against civilians. The fact that such figures now have legislative power is just another manifestation and further evidence of the regime’s continuing impunity. Meanwhile, on September 23, 2024, the Syrian regime head Bashar Assad charged Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali with the task of forming a new government. This new government consists of 28 ministries, including at least 15 which have been designated for sanctions by the United States and the European Union, with Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali himself being one of those designated, over their implication in grave human rights violations that include brutal suppression of civilians, and various war crimes. In the newly formed government Minister of Interior Mohammad Khaled al-Rahmoun and Minister of Defense Ali Mahmoud Abbas were among the ministers who retained their positions, which those two have held since 2018. Both these ministers have played an instrumental role in managing and directing violations against civilians.
The report finds that the Syrian regime continues to commit grave human rights violations, including systematic torture, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances, which have been consistently documented in regime detention centers. Evidence and first-person accounts suggest that these practices form a core component of the regime’s approach to detainees, including returning refugees, and have become fixed elements in the regime policy since March 2011, with no signs of change. The regime also continues to disregard UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions on the Syrian conflict. In this, the regime persists in holding ostensible elections and forming new governments even while continuing with violations against civilians and dissidents. This approach clearly and blatantly violates international resolutions, emphasizing the need for a comprehensive political settlement involving all Syrian stakeholders.
The report calls on the ICJ to be more effectively involved in the Syrian case, since this case is a genuine test of the credibility and power of the ICJ. As such, SNHR emphasizes, the ICJ must indicate further provisional measures and call on the UN Security Council to issue a binding resolution calling for ending systematic torture and condemning the regime’s contraventions of the ICJ’s decisions. Moreover, the report calls on the UN Security Council to impose targeted sanctions on Syrian officials who have been involved in torture and arbitrary arrest, and to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Corut (ICC), in addition to a number of other recommendations.