UN Security Council 'tired and out of step', says Amnesty International

[xchrom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/24/amnesty-un-syria


Amnesty claims that Russia and China have "used their leverage on the Security Council to forestall effective action on Syria”. Photograph: Jason Decrow/AP



The UN Security Council is suffering a failure of leadership which makes it seem "tired, out of step and increasingly unfit for purpose", the human rights organisation Amnesty International (AI) says on Thursday as it chastises the "determination" of some permanent member states to shield the Syrian regime "at all cost".

In its 50th global human rights report, AI documents human rights abuses in countries across the globe, noting a worsening discrimination against gay people in Africa and an increase in xenophobic rhetoric by some European politicians.

But after what it describes as a "momentous" year for the region, it is on the Middle East and north Africa that much of the report focuses. Despite "compelling evidence" of crimes against humanity being committed by Bashar al-Assad's regime, it notes, the UN Security Council has not referred the Syrian leader to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Even as the UN's own human rights chief spoke out against the violence, it adds, Russia and China "used their leverage at the Security Council to forestall effective action on Syria".

Failure to take action, it concludes, has left the Security Council looking "redundant". "There is a clear and compelling case for the situation in Syria to be referred to the International Criminal Court for investigation of crimes against humanity," said Salil Shetty, secretary general of Amnesty International. "The determination of some UN Security Council members to shield Syria at any cost leaves accountability for these crimes elusive and is a betrayal of the Syrian people."

[HiPointDem]

1. amnesty just lost the remaining credibility they had with me.

[xchrom]

2. after all the murder and mayhem of the past decade -- sanctioned murder and mayhem -- i was very

surprised by this 'criticism'.

[HiPointDem]

3. exactly. what's so special about syria (as if i didn't know)

[pampango]

4. BBC: Syrian army 'responsible for rights abuses' - UN report

The Syrian army and security forces are responsible for the majority of the serious rights abuses committed since March this year, according to a UN-commissioned report. The UN put the death toll at more than 9,000 since the uprising against President Assad began in March 2011.

In its latest report on Syria, covering March, April and part of May, the investigators documented cases of torture and summary execution committed by both the Syrian army and opposition forces. Despite April's ceasefire, and the deployment of UN monitors in Syria, the human rights investigators say the conflict has become increasingly militarised.

Their latest report describes a clear pattern of serious violations, in which Syrian security forces blockade villages, and carry out house-to-house searches looking for opposition forces, says the BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva. In some of these operations, the report says, entire families have been executed.

The Syrian government has refused the team entry to Syria, but the investigators carried out interviews in neighbouring countries with over 200 eyewitnesses to the conflict.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18188234