Human Rights said the Friends of Syria Group meeting in Brussels on April 24-25, 2018, should address the war crimes and impunity that characterize the Syria conflict and meet urgent protection and humanitarian needs. In it's report Human Rights Watch reviewed the most important issues to discussed in the conference.
“Brussels conference participants need to raise the costs for atrocities, and to significantly increase their own support for refugees and the future of Syria’s children.” Lotte Leicht, EU director at Human Rights Watch said.
HRW report said the participants should work to reduce the atrocities by increasing pressure against unlawful attacks with further sanctions against those directly responsible for atrocity crimes in Syria, and should agree to stop doing business with companies that provide the Syrian government with weapons and enable their unlawful use.
The Friends of Syria should press for humanitarian access to besieged and displaced civilians, and insist on the urgent release of thousands of detainees and victims of disappearances, “The parties to the conflict in Syria and their international backers have shown appalling disdain for civilian lives,” Leicht said. “The true friends of Syria are the governments that act now on key issues like war crimes and accountability, humanitarian access, and detainees,” the report added.
Then HRW called for wealthy countries to dramatically step up their commitments to resettle Syrian refugees, and said participants should insist that Syria’s neighbors not push back asylum seekers at their borders and fulfill their aid pledges to host countries in a timely and transparent manner.
The report pointed out that 2,000,000 Syrian children are not in schools, and that 600,000 of those who fled to countries in the region are also left without education.
The report talks about hundreds of thousands of detainees in the government detentions, beside the human rights activists and medical workers who were forcibly disappeared by the violent extremist groups, thus participants should:
- Press the Russian and Iranian governments to use their leverage with the Syrian government to publish official lists of detainees who died in government detention and of all current detainees without any further delay, and to release all detainees held arbitrarily or for exercising their human rights;
- Work with Gulf countries and Turkey to use their connections with anti-government groups to urgently provide information about and release detainees, including the Sakharov Prize laureate Razan Zaitouneh and her colleagues;
- Insist on full and unimpeded humanitarian access to areas that are besieged and in need;
- Press for international monitors to guarantee protection for civilians in areas retaken by the Syrian government, in screening and detention centers, and in areas being evacuated;
- Expand targeted sanctions regimes to include non-Syrian individuals and companies involved in the commission of war crimes alongside Syrian officials, individuals and companies;
- Pledge not to purchase any arms from Rosoboronexport, and to deny the Russian arms company access to arms fairs on their territory until it halts sales and maintenance of arms to the Syrian government that are used in unlawful attacks;
- Increase support for the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) established by the UN General Assembly, including through additional funding and capacities to investigate chemical weapons use, and commit to fully cooperate with the IIIM by sharing information and intelligence, including on chemical weapons;
- Enhance their national capacities and legal powers to investigate and prosecute, under universal jurisdiction, serious crimes in Syria; and
- Insist that the UN Security Council refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court.
Talking about Syrian refugees the report mentioned the difficulties that refugees face especially in Lebanon, such as discriminatory curfews imposed by Lebanon municipalities, and arbitrary tax and fees that Syrian below the Lebanese poverty line have to pay.
Then HRW said: "Wealthier countries should share responsibility by increasing their resettlement pledges, but instead have focused on blocking asylum seekers’ access."
And participants should:
- Support Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey to keep their borders open to Syrian asylum seekers, financially support their refugee assistance efforts, and significantly step up resettlement of Syrian refugees in those three countries;
- Ensure the right to family reunification for people granted protection after arriving spontaneously;
- End pushbacks of asylum seekers and refugees at their borders;
- End the EU and Greek policy of containing asylum seekers on the Greek Aegean islands, where conditions have remained appalling since the EU-Turkey deal of March 2016;
- Ensure that Syrian asylum seekers arriving on EU territory have access to fair and efficient asylum procedures, and that all asylum claims are fairly examined on their individual merits;
- Stop enabling Libyan forces to intercept migrants in international waters and condition migration cooperation with Libyan authorities on demonstrable improvements in respect for international refugee and human rights law, including ending arbitrary detention in degrading conditions;
- Insist that Turkey stops shooting Syrian asylum seekers as they try to enter, and ends border pushbacks and deportations; and
- Call on Jordan to grant access to refugees stranded on the border with Syria, and press Lebanon to lift residency and work restrictions and end municipal evictions of Syrians.