This month:
- Conflict related sexual violence
- Dangerous speech
- Financial accountability for torture and other human rights abuses
- Syria (barrel boms, chemical weapons, IHL bibliography, OPCW)
- Universal jurisdiction annual review (UJAR)
Conflict related sexual violence
The Secretary-General of the United Nations released a new report on this topic. The report provides context to the situation over the year 2021 and provides information on:
- Sexual violence as a tactic of war and terrorism: patterns, trends and emerging concerns;
- Sexual violence in conflict-affected setting;
- Crimes of sexual violence in post-conflict settings;
- Other situations of concern;
- Recommendations;
- A list of parties credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence.
the Security Council
Dangerous speech
The Dangerous Speech Project has published its Practical Guide on Dangerous Speech. It defines dangerous speech, explains how to determine which messages are indeed dangerous, and illustrates why the concept is useful for preventing violence. Furtermore, it discusses how digital and social media allow dangerous speech to spread and threaten peace, and describe some promising methods for reducing dangerous speech – or its harmful effects on people.
Financial accountability for torture
Redress has initiated action to promote financial accountability for victims of torture and other serious abuses.
While dictators and warlords embezzle millions from their countries, they use violence to silence critics and intimidate the population, including through killings, torture, enforced disappearances, and arbitrary detentions. Meanwhile, their fortunes are often spirited abroad, using shell companies and other mechanisms designed to hide financial flows. As a result, victims of these human rights abuses rarely receive reparations.
Therefore, Redress has launched the initiative to respond to the connection between grand corruption and human rights abuses, by taking action to seize the corrupt assets of high-profile human rights abusers and, where possible, have them assigned as reparations for the benefit of their victims. Its “Framework for Financial Accountability for Torture and Other Human Rights Abuses” is designed to be used by NGOs and practitioners around the world that act on behalf of victims. It aims to serve as a tool to help identify, develop and evaluate potential case strategies for pursuing financial accountability for torture and other serious human rights abuses. It identifies a range of legal and advocacy models that promote financial accountability, and challenge the financial impunity that some perpetrators enjoy. A core objective is to use perpetrators’ assets to fund reparations for their victims where appropriate mechanisms permit this.
On 6 April, the UN Secretary General published his annual report on conflict related sexual violence. It covers:
- Patterns, trends and emerging concerns;
- A description of the occurance of CRSV in several ongoing conflicts, and other sitiuations of concern;
- How CRSV is addressed in post-conflict situations
- Recommendations
- List of parties credibly suspected of committing or being responsible for patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence in situations of armed conflict on the agenda of
the Security Council
Syria
Barrel bombs
On 15 April, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) published a report on the fact that -during the Syrian conflict- the Syrian regime has dropped nearly 82,000 barrel bombs, killing 11,087 Civilians, including 1,821 children. It called for the implementation of security councilresolution 2139 and that perpetrators of indiscriminate bombardment, destruction and forced displacement are to be held account.
The report reveals that the Syrian government remained using the dirty bombs for several reasons:
- the absence of any deterrent response by the UN Security Council and the international community to its use;
- barrel bombs are crude, low-cost, homemade devices, simple to manufacture, with a highly destructive capacity, equivalent to about seven mortar shells per barrel bomb;
- the Syrian regime’s indifference to the indiscriminate effects of this weapon, and its failure to distinguish between civilians or combatants;
- the Syrian regime does not care about the reputation of the army institution, but rather uses it as a tool in maintaining power.
Bibliography
To mark the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the Syrian conflict, the ICRC Library published a special issue on the Syrian conflict. The issue covers 10 years of international humanitarian law scholarship on the conflict. The issue of accountability for violations of IHL features heavily in these publications. The studies address a diversity of issues, from foreign fighters to chemical weapons and cultural heritage. For an overview of the effects of the conflict on the Syrian people, you may wish to read the ICRC’s recently released report, A Decade of Loss: Syria’s Youth after 10 years of crisis.
Chemical weapons
Ten years into the Syrian civil war, despite a series of international crises and two rounds of punitive military strikes by the United States, the international community still struggles to find ways to effectively curb the repeat use of chemical weapons in the conflict and hold those responsible for the use of proscribed weapons against civilian populations to account.
The Global Public Policy Institute (GPPI) holds a data portal and interactive map that shows the scale and pervasiveness of the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict. It has established the most comprehensive dataset of incidents of chemical weapons use in Syria to date. The downloadable data includes 349 confirmed attacks that have occurred since the first recorded incident in late 2012.
The Syrian military’s use of chemical weapons is closely intertwined – logistically, operationally and strategically – with its conventional campaign of indiscriminate violence against civilian populations.
Organisation for the prohibition of Chemical Weapons
On 12 April 2021 the OPCW’s Investigation and Identification Team released the findings of its second report. The IIT is responsible for identifying the perpetrators of the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic where -previously- the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) has determined that chemical weapons have been used or likely used in Syria.
The report and investigation are focusing on the incident in Saraqib, Syrian Arab Republic, on 4 February 2018. It reaches the conclusion that there are reasonable grounds to believe that, at approximately 21:22 on 4 February 2018, a military helicopter of the Syrian Arab Air Force under the control of the Tiger Forces hit eastern Saraqib by dropping at least one cylinder. The cylinder ruptured and released chlorine over a large area, affecting 12 named individuals.
Universal Jurisdiction Annual Review 2021
On 12 April, FIDH, TRIAL, REDRESS, ECCHR, CJA and Civitas Maxima published the annual UJAR on ongoing universal jurisdiction cases in 2020.
- the use of universal jurisdictions continue to increase in a large number of countries;
- field investigations were considerably limited by national lockdowns and movement restrictions;
- some ongoing investigations which relied on the capacity of witnesses, victims, investigators and judges to travel abroad either slowed down or stalled;
- remote meetings presented advantages to victims and witnesses;
- online interviews by investigators meant they could speak to witnesses spread throughout the world in a single day, speeding up their work considerably;
- 18 new cases went to trial in 2020, bringing the total to 30 ongoing trials.
