In Syria’s civil war, the Assad regime raped girls as young as nine and ISIS forced them into sexual slavery. The regime tortured boys and ISIS forced them into military training. The terror group ordered young boys to carry out killings in public. The Assad regime, with help from Hezbollah and the IRGC, targeted children by sniper fire; they also used them as bargaining chips to extract ransoms. These are the war gruesome facts on Syrian children.
These facts have been the focus of a new report by U.N.-backed investigators into the Syrian war. This is the first time the U.N. looks solely on the plight of the children of Syria’s civil war.
The group, known as the Commission of Inquiry for Syria, has been scrutinizing and chronicling human rights violations since shortly after the conflict broke out in 2011. The investigators said in their report released Thursday that the abuse and violence against Syrian children goes well beyond just getting caught in the crossfire of warring sides.
The report said:
After eight years of conflict, children in Syria have experienced unabated violations of their rights: they continue to be killed, maimed, injured and orphaned, bearing the brunt of violence perpetrated by warring parties.
It did not offer a casualty count among children. The commission stopped counting the victims years ago. It cited its inability to verify the figures because the Assad regime blocked the U.N. from entering Syria.
The report did not refer to the ethnic cleansing Iran is carrying out against Syrians in general.
“ROBBED OF THEIR CHILDHOOD”
The report did, however, say that the war displaced 5 million children internally and outside Syria, “robbed of their childhood” by violations from all sides.
Extremists from the Islamic State group subjected girls as young as nine to “sexual slavery” while Muslim extremists recruited boys to fight in their areas. Airstrikes have devastated entire cities and towns.
The psychotic Assad, which bears responsibility for respect of human rights in Syria under international law, ignored such commitments, the report said. It cited pro-government fighters as “regularly targeting children using sniper fire” and deploying cluster munitions, thermobaric bombs and chemical weapons, “often against civilian objects such as schools and hospitals.”
The report analyzed the period from September 2011 to October 2019. It conducted more than 5,000 interviews with Syrian children, as well as witnesses, survivors, relatives, medical professionals, defectors and fighters.
As with its previous reports, the three-member Commission of Inquiry listed recommendations for the warring sides, Syria’s government and the international community. But there are concerns the report will like many others in Syria’s civil war, go unheeded.
Just like other reports before it, it might bring about few concrete results.
COMMENTS