United Nations helps Syria bomb the opposition

For months, as part of the war-related disengagement program in Syria, the United Nations has been sharing contact details for health centers located in areas controlled by the Syrian opposition with the Russian government. The goal is to ensure that neither Russia nor its Syrian allies strike them in error.

But the coordinate system is not working properly and is counterproductive: in recent Syrian government attacks on Idlib, 46 civilian installations were attacked. The US-Syrian association, a local United Nations partner in Idlib, said 14 facilities attacked in Idlib were on the UN list.

In other words, the Russian and Syrian governments know exactly where these bombarded facilities are.

On July 30, UN Secretary General, António Guterres, called for an investigation to be conducted into those who bomb these facilities, particularly those believed to be under UN protection. . No small use. At the same time, Russia and its allies continue to receive United Nations information on the location of the opposition.

This is not the first time that facilities placed under UN protection are bombed. In March and April 2018, four supposedly protected hospitals were attacked. Susana Sirkin, director of the US-based Physicians for Human Rights, who has been monitoring attacks on medical facilities since the start of the conflict eight years ago, said it was clear that the United Nations system United did not work. "Since this system has completely failed, we can question the possibility of sharing with Russia the coordinates of medical facilities."

The risks

Some organizations that agreed to share important information with the government of President Bashar al-Assad and his allies, including Russia, were aware of the dangers and hoped to use the violations as evidence in support of their cause. "The decision to share information was made after many difficult deliberations," said Ahmed Debs, an employee of the Union of Healthcare, a coalition of non-governmental organizations from the United States, France, Germany and other countries that help manage health facilities from the opposition. He added: "The idea of ​​participating in the contact details of the medical centers was completely rejected at the beginning of each year 2015, but after the Syrian government and Russia began to systematically target the medical centers in Aleppo-East, and everyone knew that the Syrian government knew the coordinates thanks to its spies. So we thought that if we shared with them We used to prove that the Russians and Syrians deliberately bombed medical facilities after getting their contact information. Sirkin called the decision to share information as "painful" and "absolutely desperate". They were wanting to prove to the world that the Russian and Syrian governments will continue even after the bombing to give them the coordinates of the places, a violation of international law. "

security Council

This strategy may have succeeded to some extent in attracting the attention of the United Nations Security Council to the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Idlib. But all those affected by the attack did not accept this strategy, and the surgeon at the Maarat al-Numan central hospital, Yasser al-Sam, refused to provide contact details as this would increase the risk of terrorist attacks. the bomb, but accepted after receiving assurances that hospitals are protected. "We were assured that the hospital would not be bombed, but the bombing was repeated on us. "I was confident that sharing coordinates was a big mistake."

"The regime is a failure," UN Security Council chief Mark Luckock, head of the United Nations Office of Human Rights Coordination, who oversees all disengagement arrangements, told the UN Security Council. "The current disengagement environment is ineffective," said Jean Egeland, a former human rights negotiator at the United Nations in Syria. The attacks at Idlib worried him and this man played a crucial role in establishing the presence of the organization on the spot. "I'm afraid now that many UN-protected hospitals are being bombed in Idlib, which means there's no more effective protection," he told Foreign Policy .

Hope in accounting

Many local doctors and activists who shared the location of their medical centers and clinics hope to take advantage of the UN's reputation to shed light on the abuses committed by the Syrian government. They also claim that the investigation requested by the UN Secretary-General offers an unconvincing opportunity to convince the world to witness their suffering, They hope that the results of the investigation will eventually make it possible ensure that criminals are held responsible for violations of international law.

The Syrian government and its allies have denied using information obtained from the United Nations to carry out their attacks. In a letter to the UN last month, Bashar al-Jaafari, representative of the Syrian government, said all of Idlib's health centers were run by "terrorist groups", "ineffective", and quoted four: the Maarat al Nu'Hum central hospital and Ibn Sina hospital. The Idlib National Hospital and Jisr al-Shughur Hospital considered that Jaafari's message was an admission that the suppression of "ineffective" insurgent-run hospitals was justified.

The contradiction

But all these assurances contradict what the local actors say. According to the US-Syrian Medical Association, the four hospitals mentioned by al-Jaafari are on the list of UN-protected centers, and these four hospitals provide exclusively humanitarian work. "His organization directly supported the hospitals of Maarat al-Nu'Man and Ibn Sina and rejected the Syrian government's claims that they would be run by terrorists," said Basil Termanini, former president of the US-Syrian Medical Association, at Foreign Policy. He added: "The US-Syrian association has strict laws, we do not allow any weapons to enter our facilities, we do not allow an armed group to interfere in our operations and, in very rare cases when armed groups tried to interfere in our daily operations in a particular health facility, we stopped working. "We are threatening to halt all our operations in Syria," said Safwat Khan Sheikhouni, director of the Idlib Health Department. "It is fully managed by us and is under the influence of no armed group."

The question now is clearly: "What can the United Nations do with the evidence that the Syrian and Russian governments have violated its disengagement program?" Activists know that the United Nations has its hands tied to the Security Council because of Russia's veto power, but they hope that will happen. No matter what to hold Moscow and Damascus responsible for their crimes.

Sirkin of Physicians for Human Rights said that it would be mandatory to make public the findings of the UN investigation. Egeland said that although the global body may not be able to sue the perpetrators of these crimes, it can and must use this opportunity to reveal their names and expose them. Termanini believes that more could be done and said that the UN report should be handed over to an independent, impartial and international mechanism that assesses other investigations into war crimes in Syria, including enforced disappearances. , torture and summary executions. He added that the organization could be invited to seize the courts in the future.

Humanitarian actors seem ready to do their utmost to unmask the Russian and Syrian governments, but there are unfortunately many reasons to believe that the scandal will have no impact on the Syrian problem.

Anshal Vohra is a journalist based in Beirut

Many local doctors and activists who shared the location of their medical centers and clinics hope to take advantage of the UN's reputation to highlight the violations committed by the Syrian government.

Activists are aware that the UN is linked to the Security Council because of Russia's right of veto. They hope, however, that everything will be self-evident for Moscow and Damascus to be held accountable.