Since March 2011, Syria has been engulfed in a violent struggle that has spawned a humanitarian and refugee crisis of massive proportions. The brutal conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people, left millions internally and externally displaced and in need of urgent assistance, and decimated critical infrastructure in the country. Despite the United Nation’s (UN) repeated calls for a global ceasefire, and even in the face of a global pandemic, aerial bombardments by Russian and Syrian air forces on civilian sites have continued unabated, and impunity for perpetrators has meant unending suffering for civilian populations caught in the crossfire.
Although the UN Security Council (UNSC) has always strongly condemned attacks on civilian facilities like schools and hospitals—which, under the Geneva conventions, are off-limits in a war—it can do little else, given the disagreements among the five permanent members (P5) over the Syrian crisis. Nonetheless, UN agencies have tried to facilitate the upholding of international humanitarian law (IHL) by urging NGOs and humanitarian agencies working on the ground to join a UN-run process known as “humanitarian deconfliction”, which helps humanitarian actors on the ground relay information about their presence (through GPS coordinates) and their legally protected status to militaries operating in the area, and registers them on what is informally known as a “no-strike list”.
At first glance, this sounds like a logical and effective measure that can hold militaries accountable for their actions if civilian sites on this list are hit by air raids. However, the task at hand is not so straightforward. Using the deconfliction mechanism is purely voluntary and does not constitute a legally binding agreement between any of the involved parties. Since its success is based solely on conflict parties’ commitment to IHL, deconfliction does not in any way guarantee the safety of personnel, facilities, or sites.
There is also no overarching international policy or uniform guidelines on how deconfliction is to be practiced, which means that there are several ad-hoc notification arrangements among various actors. Aid organizations like Médecins sans Frontiers (MSF) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), for instance, have their own bilateral engagement with parties to the conflict, and do not go through the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which serves as the primary coordinator and communication middleman between parties. For the information that OCHA does receive, it has no ability or mandate to double-check or rectify the details (which often include coordinates for thousands of sites) offered by humanitarian actors. This makes the system becomes potentially vulnerable to error and abuse, in that an overwhelming number of locations can dissuade the warring parties from taking the data seriously, and they can intentionally target civilian medical or educational facilities while claiming no responsibility for IHL violations by saying that the sites targeted were, in fact, terrorist or rebel strongholds.
Despite their shortcomings, deconfliction practices are increasingly being relied upon in conflict contexts such as Yemen and Syria, in an effort to, at the very least, name and shame parties for blatantly violating international law. However, the UN’s abilities on that front are limited as well. Over the past year, flagrant attacks on technically deconflicted sites like childcare centers, schools, clinics, and hospitals in Idlib, northern Hama and western Aleppo became so frequent that the UN Secretary-General established a Board of Inquiry (BOI) to investigate the violations. The move was lauded as a positive step forward in Security Council that is paralyzed by deep political divisions regarding the Syrian crisis, which has thus far stymied any efforts to stabilize the region. Since the start of the war in 2011, Russia has vetoed 15 UN resolutions relating to the Syria conflict, effectively blocking accountability efforts and hindering humanitarian aid deliveries into the country. Given Russia’s standing in the UNSC, and the fact that its approval is essential for gaining meaningful humanitarian access to Syria, it is not surprising that the UN investigation, which acknowledged the attacks on hospitals and health clinics, attributed the strikes to Assad’s government and its “allies” and stopped short of categorically naming Moscow as an equal culprit in the bombings.
Physicians for Human Rights [PHR], a US-based advocacy organization that has tracked attacks on medical infrastructure since the beginning of the Syrian war nine years ago, has corroborated 595 attacks on at least 350 separate health facilities and documented the killing of 923 medical personnel. PHR research attributes 90% of these attacks to the Syrian government and its allies, including the Russian government. However, the UN probe, which investigated only seven cases and included a refugee camp, said that those strikes did not kill any civilians. Furthermore, the Syrian government also refused to cooperate with UN investigators, who were denied access to the sites they were tasked to scrutinize. Susannah Sirkin, the director of policy at PHR, said in a statement that the UN inquiry was “grossly inadequate” and doomed from the start. “It failed to account for the overwhelming evidence that the Syrian and Russian governments have executed a consistent and brutal strategy of bombing hospitals, schools, and civilian sites. For more than nine years, they have systematically targeted hospitals and health workers. The summary of the Board Of Inquiry (BOI) report does not yield any new insights, nor does it account for this larger context,” she added. This points to the glaring shortcomings of relying solely on deconfliction measures to ensure accountability for war crimes. Naming and shaming clearly can lead to no tangible progress, unless it can be backed up by real negative consequences for the violators. Unfortunately, in the case of deconfliction, when the system does not work, there is no punishment for breaches.
Both Russian and Syrian authorities have denied accusations of systematic hostilities against civilians or civilian infrastructure, and have criticized western powers of spreading disinformation and working to sustain a terrorist presence in Idlib in order to combat legitimate authorities. In late June this year, Russia formally quit the deconfliction system, claiming that some of the system’s facilities were used by terrorists. “This mechanism operated on a voluntary basis and was not fixed by any Security Council resolutions or other legally binding documents. Our probes repeatedly demonstrated that some of the deconfliction facilities were actually used as terrorists’ headquarters, so they could not be granted humanitarian status,” said Russian UN Envoy, Vasily Nebenza in a statement.
Russia’s withdrawal from the deconfliction mechanism is deeply concerning for many reasons. Firstly, it points to the failure of deconfliction practices to deter deliberate attacks on civilians and humanitarian workers, highlighting the severe damage Syria’s nine-year conflict has done to an already fragile system of international norms and laws. Secondly, it raises questions about Russia’s military intentions in the region. At such a precarious time, if the UN does not, or is unable to, signal its intent and ability to hold Moscow accountable for its actions in Syria (regardless of its participation in deconfliction), the protection of millions of civilians stuck in the conflict will remain a distant dream.
Humanitarian Deconfliction and the Struggle to Protect Civilians in Syria
Coordinate-sharing mechanisms have proved futile in preventing airstrikes on civilians.
August 11, 2020
SOURCE: WALL STREET JOURNAL