The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), expressed its disappointment at the report by the Internal Board of Inquiry for “the failure to assign direct responsibility to Russian forces for the bombing of some medical facilities, referring only to the Syrian regime and “its allies” without naming these allies.”
In a press release issued on Monday, the monitoring group said that “at least 43 attacks on medical facilities were carried out by Russian forces Syria since the Sochi Agreement entered into force in September 2018 until April 17, 2020, while the total record of attacks carried out by Russian forces on medical facilities in all Syrian governorates since Russia’s military intervention in Syria began on September 30, 2015, had reached 207 as of April 17, 2020.”
The Network noted that it identified seven medical facilities that had been targeted on 12 separate occasions by Syrian Regime forces or Russian regime forces, despite these facilities being listed within the deconfliction mechanism.
The Network also voiced disappointment at the Board’s recommendations contained there which were generally inadequate, particularly with regard to the request from the deconfliction mechanism to share the data of medical facilities with the Syrian regime, with this request lending unwarranted legitimacy to the Syrian regime which is the main party accused, as SNHR’s report notes, in approximately 540 operations targeting medical facilities since March 2011 to date.
The Network called on all boards of inquiry to be “strengthened by the option of imposing punitive mechanisms in the event that the state’s ruling authorities refuse to meet their requirements, such as preventing them from entering the country and questioning and rejecting their work as the Syrian regime has done; among the punitive mechanisms suggested in this case is that the United Nations should impose sanctions on the Syrian regime, including economic, political, and possibly military sanctions.”
The Network also called on the United Nations investigators in northwest Syria to finally acknowledge the responsibility of the Russian forces for the bombing of a school complex in Qal’at al Madiq, after the report of the Internal United Nations Board of Inquiry in northwest Syria was released. It also called on the United Nations Secretariat to make greater efforts to prevent UNSC members’ use of their veto to protect any regime, such as Syria’s, which commits crimes against humanity and war crimes. (Source: SOC’s Media Department)
