PRESS RELEASE : UN HRC52 – Statement on the Commission of Inquiry on Syria [July 2023]

The press release issued by the Foreign Office on 5 July 2023.

Statement on the oral update of the Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic. Delivered by UK’s Ambassador to the WTO & UN in Geneva, Simon Manley.

Thank you very much Mr President.

And thank you, Commissioners, for your update. It’s a sober reminder that the war in Syria is far from over and that the suffering of the Syrian people continues unabated.

Just in recent days we have seen further indiscriminate airstrikes in northwest Syria that have resulted in further civilian deaths. Deaths that add to the toll of over 300,000 civilians killed since 2011. So let me once again implore all parties to abide by international humanitarian law and to seek peace through the process set out so clearly in UNSCR 2254.

Mr President, the protracted conflict continues to limit women and girls’ ability to exercise their rights, as we have heard again today. Sexual and gender-based violence has increased and women have scarce recourse to justice.

Mr President, the widows and the wives of the hundreds of thousands killed, missing or forcibly disappeared by regime forces suffer multiple hardships, often searching fruitlessly for their loved ones, stuck in a legal limbo. So let me, like others, warmly welcome the creation of the new Independent Institution on Missing Persons in Syria and encourage all States to support this mechanism, and all parties to co-operate with it.

Commissioners,

I would be interested to hear your further thoughts on the state of women’s legal rights in Syria, in particular the legal and customary discrimination that mitigates against justice for acts of gender violence.