Press release
Syrian Opposition Coalition
Department of Media and Communications
May 29, 2021
The criminal regime that targeted hospitals, medical centers and field hospitals as well as killed thousands of doctors and medical staff over the past ten years became a member of the World Health Organization’s Executive Board.
We are undoubtedly in front of a scandal that exposes a moral decline and institutional, procedural, organizational and legal corruption. How come a murderous regime with such a criminal record be elected to the Executive Board of a global organization that claims to save lives and work for the people’s wellbeing!
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has previously suspended the membership of the criminal regime in response to its use of chemical weapons in its war against the Syrian people. The Assad regime’s crimes against hospitals and medical staff are no less heinous as it has systematically destroyed hospitals and turned many of them into slaughterhouses, let alone its killing of hundreds of medical personnel. However, it was today elected to the World Health Organization’s Executive Board instead of being expelling from the organization.
International institutions and organizations investigating war crimes and crimes of the use of chemical weapons have issued numerous reports documenting the Assad regime’s crimes and atrocities against the Syrian people. These include brutal torture leading to death which was documented by Caesar photographs and numerous testimonies, the mass forced displacement, the use of barrel bombs and chemical weapons, and the massacres it committed with the sue of the various types of weapons.
Instead of holding it accountable, today the criminal is rewarded by being given a seat at the WHO’s Executive Board in a historical precedent that exposed the fundamental flaw and corruption in international institutions. The move also exposed that these institutions are vulnerable to infiltration and manipulation, leading to violation of the fundamental principles on which they are based.
This absurd move must sound the alarm bell about the internal system of this organization and other organizations of the international community that tolerate such missteps. It also risks undermining the people’s confidence in these institutions and even the usefulness of belonging to them.
The Syrian Opposition Coalition denounces this dubious move as it calls on the United Nations and the World Health Organization to launch an immediate investigation into the legitimacy of this procedure and the organization’s role in electing the Assad regime’s to the Executive Board.