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	It is sad that South Africa should undermine the cause of justice for so many victims by David Tolbert International Center for Transitional Justice   June 15, 2015   In defiance of a court order, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has departed from South Africa. The South African government allowed his departure, in blatant breach of its obligations under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). There is now no immediate possibility of al-Bashir’s arrest and transfer to the ICC to face charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.   “The actions of the South African government have dealt a grave blow to the rights of victims of atrocities in Darfur and to the prospects of establishing a credible system of international criminal justice through the ICC,” says David Tolbert, president of the International Center for Transitional Justice.   The action was consistent with the established tone of the African Union’s claims that the ICC is persecuting African states.   These claims ignore the fact that Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, and Mali all referred the situations in their own countries to the ICC. Two different Ivorian governments confirmed the recognition of the ICC’s jurisdiction to enable it to investigate crimes alleged to have occurred in Cote d’Ivoire. The UN Security Council referred the situations of Darfur and Libya – the latter with a unanimous vote of all 15 members of the UN Security Council. Of the eight ICC situation countries, only Kenya is the subject of an investigation as a result of the ICC Prosecutor’s own initiative.   While there is no doubt that the African Union has been successful in rallying leaders of African states to decry the ICC as an instrument of neo-colonialism, the fact remains that the court has acted almost exclusively on the request of different African states themselves or the UN Security Council.   The position of the African Union, and today the decision by the South African government, present the single biggest threat to the decades-long struggle to respect the victims of human rights abuses.   “Whatever the criticisms of the efficiency and impact of the ICC, the African Union runs the risk of establishing itself as the single most effective ‘Impunity Club’ in the world, using sham arguments to screen high-level suspects and obstruct the pursuit of justice,” comments Tolbert. “It is sad that South Africa, so long seen as a global example in progress towards peace through measures of truth, justice and dignity, should undermine the cause of justice for so many victims.”   http://www.ictj.org/news/south-africa-bashir-depart-international-justice Visit the related web page
	Act now to prevent industrial scale human rights violations by ISIL by Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, Ben Emmerson Special Rapporteur on the protection of human rights while countering terrorism   Geneva, 23 June 2015   Statement by Mr. Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, Chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic.   Civilians are the main victims of an ever-accelerating cycle of violence. Syrians continue to lose their lives, homes, and livelihoods in a conflict in which there is little, if any, attempt to adhere to international law. The warring parties’ failure to protect civilians – as well as their seemingly deliberate decision to put civilians in harm’s way – has led to unspeakable suffering.   In a paper released today, the Commission examines the impact on civilians of the conduct of the warring parties and lack of humanitarian access. Recently documented incidents have reinforced our earlier findings that the main cause of civilian casualties, arbitrary displacement, and destruction is the deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, attacks on civilian and protected objects, and the punitive imposition of sieges and blockades.   With each passing day there are fewer safe places in Syria, as evidenced by the mass displacement of civilians within and out of the country. Indiscriminate attacks on civilian-inhabited areas are committed across the country by most, if not all, of the warring parties. Everyday decisions – whether to visit a neighbour, to go out to buy bread – have become, potentially, decisions about life and death. Large numbers of children have been killed in bombardments of their homes, schools, and playgrounds.   The trauma experienced by civilians who live under indiscriminate fire, and who cannot predict when a deadly attack might arrive, cannot be underestimated. This is a suffering that knows no gender, ethnicity, or religion.   The Government, with its superior firepower and control of the skies, inflicts the most damage in its indiscriminate attacks on civilian-inhabited cities, towns, villages and makeshift IDP camps. Non-State armed groups continue to launch attacks on Government-held localities, usually from nearby ground positions, causing civilian deaths and injuries.   In no instance have the parties to the conflict shown any commitment to the paramount obligation under international law to distinguish between civilian and military objectives. Regardless of the belligerents involved, the majority of attacks are either not directed at a specific military objective or fail to employ a means of combat capable of being directed at such an objective.   In no instance have feasible precautions been taken to avoid or minimise incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects. Additionally both the Government forces – including paramilitary and other supporting militia – and multiple non-State armed groups continue to locate military objectives within or near densely populated civilian-inhabited areas.   The Government’s campaign of shelling and aerial bombardment sits alongside the besieging of areas and the arrest and disappearance of predominantly fighting–age males from restive areas at its checkpoints. Their strategy appears to be one of making life unbearable for civilians who remain inside armed group controlled areas.   The Government’s relentless bombardment of areas held by armed groups has spread terror amongst the civilian population and prompted the arbitrary displacement of thousands. Those fleeing tend to be women and children, as men and boys above the age of 15 are more likely to be detained at checkpoints.   Shelling of civilian-inhabited areas by non-State armed groups – including but not limited to ISIS, Jabhat Al-Nusra, and Jaysh Al-Islam – have terrorised men, women and children living in localities held by the Government. Sending a message that they are a force to be reckoned with, these attacks also appear to be launched with the intention of punishing civilians for their perceived support of the Government. Where these attacks are launched on areas with minority communities, they create further divisions within Syrian society and risk inflaming sectarian tensions.   Government forces, anti-Government armed groups, and ISIS employ the use of sieges to devastating effect. The Government continues to besiege Yarmouk camp in Damascus as well eastern Ghouta and Zabadani in the Damascus countryside. These sieges have been on-going for more than two years and have resulted in civilians starving to death, or dying from chronic illness or injuries sustained in aerial bombardments for which there is little or no medical care available. It is estimated that 40% of the children in Yarmouk camp suffer from malnutrition. The denial and obstruction of food and other items indispensable to the survival of the civilian population aims to force restive areas into submission, as part of the Government’s strategy of ‘surrender or starve’.   Anti-Government armed groups have imposed sieges around the towns of Nubul and Zahra in Aleppo and, more recently, around Foua’a and Kafria in Idlib. The situation in these Idlib towns is reportedly dire – with little, if any, food or medicine available to civilians. In particular, milk for infants is desperately needed. Additionally, anti-Government armed groups have deliberately impaired the electricity and water supply to Government-held neighbourhoods of Dara’a and Aleppo cities, depriving civilians of access to potable water and sanitation.   The terrorist group ISIS is imposing a siege on Government-held areas of Dayr Az-Zawr city, home to a population of approximately 300,000 people, the majority of whom are civilians. In March 2015, ISIS called on civilians to leave the area. Those who attempted to leave were prevented from doing so by Government forces.   Sieges and the protracted denial of humanitarian aid, including food, have led to malnutrition and starvation. Rather than serving to weaken the military forces of the opposing side, it is civilians living in these areas who have suffered. Sieges and denial of aid have proved fatal for the most vulnerable. The elderly, infants and young children, those suffering from chronic illnesses, and those injured in shelling or bombardments are the most likely to perish.   As sieges persist, the circle of casualties expands relentlessly. Trapped in an area without food and often under bombardment, a sense of desperation has gripped the civilian population. Severe psychological trauma exists in these besieged communities.   The continuing war represents a profound failure of diplomacy. Influential states have acted with equivocation in their efforts to extinguish the conflict in Syria. While upholding the need for a political solution, some have deepened their military involvement, accentuating the internationalisation of the conflict. Believing that military pressure is a prerequisite for any political process to succeed, external actors have flooded the warring parties they support with money, fighters, and weapons. This has only fed a brutal escalation of the armed violence that continues to take the lives of Syrian civilians.   Those who bear the greatest responsibility for the crimes, violations and abuses committed against Syrians fear no consequences. Over the last four years, the Commission has reported a litany of abuses, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet justice still seems well beyond our collective grasp. The absence of decisive action by the community of States, as a whole, has nourished a now deeply entrenched culture of impunity.   A war in which civilians are systematically killed, opponents are silenced, and communities are pitted against one another, requires more than compassion to resolve.   The Syrian people deserve an unambiguous commitment to helping them to return their country to peace. To create conditions amenable to negotiations is a shared responsibility. This cannot be achieved without the setting aside of the narrow national interests of a few and the coming together of a community which holds within itself not only the ideals of human rights, but also a deepening realisation that, without peace and justice in Syria, all the world will suffer the consequences.   In its latest situation report, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that some 12 million people in the Middle Eastern country today remain in need of humanitarian assistance – a twelve-fold increase since 2011. The figures include 5.6 million children. Meanwhile, 7.6 million people have been displaced by the conflict and another 4.8 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in hard to reach and besieged locations.   The humanitarian impact of the crisis is only further compounded by the grim human toll which, as of today, counts over 200,000 people killed and over one million injured since hostilities began.   http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/IICISyria/Pages/IndependentInternationalCommission.aspx   June 2015   The use of barrel bombs by Syrian governmental forces. (FIDH)   In the wake of one of the deadliest months for Syrian civilians due to the use of barrel bombs by Syrian governmental forces, FIDH and its partner organisation in Syria, Violations Documentation Center (VDC), urge the Security Council to take decisive action to ensure that the Syrian government immediately end this practice and that those responsible be held accountable.   According to VDC, at least 6,589 civilians have been killed since the start of the Syrian crisis as the result of barrel bombs dropped in heavily populated areas by helicopters of the Syrian air force. Barrel bombs are unconventional and cheap weapons, usually metal containers filled with explosives, shrapnel, or chemicals used with the intent of inflicting maximum destruction. Some barrel bombs dropped in Aleppo have been found to contain chlorine toxic gas.   Targets have included hospitals, mosques, and marketplaces. On 10 June 2015, Busra Hospital in Aleppo was destroyed after being hit by 10 barrel bombs. According to Doctors without Borders (MSF), at least nine other medical facilities have been hit with barrel bombs in Aleppo in the past month.   “The use of barrel bombs to target civilian areas, including mosques and hospitals, has resulted in the deaths of multitudes of civilians. This should shock the conscience of Security Council members and force them to use their leverage with the Syrian government to immediately put an end to the use of barrel bombs. The UNSC should also look into all possible options to hold those responsible accountable, including by referring this situation to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court,” said FIDH President, Karim Lahidji.   FIDH also joins various member states and numerous NGOs in urging the UNSC to establish a mechanism to track and publicly expose all attacks against civilians, as well as the indiscriminate employment of weapons in populated areas, including shelling and aerial bombardment, such as the use of barrel bombs in Syria and to lay down clear consequences for the violators.   The targets of the barrel bombs have no military objective and reflect the government’s decision to deliberately target civilians. This is a barbaric tactic used by the Syrian government in order to inflict severe suffering and sow fear among the population, especially in areas where rebel forces are allegedly advancing.   Due to indiscriminate nature of the bombardments and to the failure to abide by the obligation to distinguish between military objectives and civilians and civilian objects, the use of barrel bombs is a clear violation of international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes. Attacks on hospitals are a clear violation of international humanitarian law. Furthermore, as part of a generalized and systematic attack against the civilian population, the use of barrel bombs may also constitute crimes against humanity.   http://www.fidh.org/International-Federation-for-Human-Rights/north-africa-middle-east/syria/joint-statement-on-the-use-of-barrel-bombs-by-syrian-governmental http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/30/syria-barrage-barrel-bombs http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/03/22/syria-rebels-car-bombs-rockets-kill-civilians http://www.msf.org/article/syria-report-aleppo%E2%80%99s-reality-daily-life-under-barrel-bombs   June 2015   United Nations human rights expert Ben Emmerson has urged the UN Security Council to take effective action to enforce international law and protect civilians in areas under the control of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL).   “The Security Council has an obligation to act,” said the Special Rapporteur on the protection and promotion of human rights while countering terrorism, during the presentation of his report on the gross violations committed by ISIL and the pressing need for accountability.   “Given the reports of genocide, all members of the Security Council may now have a specific responsibility to take action to prevent this most serious of international crimes,” he said. “But whether these dreadful crimes qualify as genocide or not the time has come to recognise that permanent members have a responsibility to refrain from using their veto powers to block action aimed at ending atrocity crimes.”   The Special Rapporteur noted that this approach now has the support of many States, civil society organisation and entities of the UN. “This mandate,” he stated, “also unequivocally supports efforts to bring about this desperately need reform.”   In his report, Mr. Emmerson describes how different entities have found clear evidence of persecution and summary execution of religious and ethnic minority communities on a mass scale, arbitrary execution of community leaders, journalists, intellectuals and others, mass disappearances, forced religious conversions and systematic torture. As many as 700 people were reportedly murdered in one such massacre.   The enforcement of summary justice in areas under ISIL control includes public beheading, shooting, stoning, lashing and amputation. Mutilated corpses are put on public display as a deterrent. Systematic gender-based violence, rape and sexual slavery are a part of everyday life. Homosexual men are routinely targeted on grounds of their sexuality.   Children have been subjected to summary execution, arbitrary detention and torture, and forced to take part in military training. Significant religious and cultural sites have been systematically destroyed.   “In short, those living under the terror of ISIL are in daily fear for their lives,” the expert said. “These shocking crimes are being committed on an industrial scale and amount to an affront to the conscience of the entire international community.”   The Special Rapporteur noted that, so far, the UN Security Council has only determined that ISIL represents a threat to international peace and security and it has stressed the need to bring perpetrators to justice. “But the Council has conspicuously failed to either authorise military action under Chapter 7 of the Charter, or to refer the situation in Iraq and Syria to the International Criminal Court,” he said.   “States are under an obligation to take measures to protect civilian populations from widespread and systematic acts of violence and terrorism,” Mr. Emmerson concluded. “It is essential that any response be grounded in respect for international law, including international humanitarian law, international human rights law and refugee law.” Visit the related web page
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