Hundreds of barrel bombs used as Syria defies new UN Resolution

The Syrian government is raining explosive barrel bombs on civilians in defiance of a unanimous United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution passed earlier this year, Human Rights Watch said.

As of February, all parties to the conflict in Syria were prohibited from using barrel bombs and other weapons in populated areas but, as Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), reported these types of attacks have taken place “month after month” whilst the UNSC has sat “idly by” as the government challenged its demands with new barrel bomb attacks on civilians.

Between February 22 and July 22 this year, some 1,655 civilians have been killed in the Aleppo government as a consequence of aerial strikes.

By using barrel bombs on densely populated areas the Syrian government is using means and methods of warfare that do not distinguish between civilians, who are accorded protection under the laws of war, and combatants, making attacks indiscriminate and therefore unlawful.

The UNSC is due to meet again today for a fifth round of reporting on the resolution. Since it was passed, HRW has documented over 650 major new damage sites consistent with barrel bomb impacts on neighbourhoods of the city of Aleppo held by non-state armed groups. Non-state armed groups participate in indiscriminate attacks as well, including car bombings and mortar attacks in pro-government areas.

HRW urged the international community to see the systematic and continuous targeting of civilians as war crimes, and some amount to crimes against humanity. Military commanders should not, as a matter of policy, order the use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated areas due to the harm to civilians, HRW said.

Companies and individuals that provide arms, ammunition, or materiel to Syria or to non-state armed groups that have been implicated in crimes against humanity or war crimes, risk complicity in these crimes, HRW warned.

The UN resolution also strongly condemns the arbitrary detention and torture of civilians in Syria, as well as kidnappings, abductions, and forced disappearances, and demands that “all parties, in particular the Syrian authorities, promptly allow rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access for UN humanitarian agencies and their implementing partners, including across conflict lines and across borders.”

When Syria failed to comply with that demand, the UNSC authorised UN agencies and their implementing partners to deliver humanitarian assistance across the border even without government consent.

“Russia and China need to allow the Security Council to show the same resolve and unanimity it brought to the issue of humanitarian aid to call a halt to these deadly attacks on civilians,” Whitson urged.

Having repeatedly blocked UNSC action to penalise the Syrian government for its rights abuses, Whitson said, they need to allow the Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Syria’s government, as well as on any groups implicated in widespread or systematic human rights abuses. This would limit the Syrian government’s ability to conduct aerial attacks that violate international law.

She went on to explain that they need to allow the council to impose a travel ban and an asset freeze on individuals credibly implicated in grave abuses, and refer the situation to the International Criminal Court.