Pedersen: Syria has hashighest numbers of detainees
The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Mr. Geir O. Pedersen, Said that Syria has the highest numbers of detained, abducted and missing persons worldwide. He expressed his solidarity with the victims’ families, stressing that this file is one of his main priorities in Syria.
Pedersen said in a statement issued on August 31, 2022, “The Secretary-General has released a study “on how to bolster efforts, including through existing measures and mechanisms, to clarify the fate and whereabouts of missing people in the Syrian Arab Republic, identify human remains and provide support to their families”.
“Syria is one of the contexts that has the highest numbers of detained, abducted and missing persons in the world” he added.
In his statement issued on the “International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances”, he continued, “I want to express my full support to the families and supporting associations, which have worked with the UN in developing this study, and that have tirelessly led efforts to clarify the fate of their loved ones. This file remains one of my key priorities, based on humanitarian grounds, but also because any credible effort to build trust and confidence amongst the Syrians must include real steps forward on this issue”.
Pedersen concluded, “I hope that Member States will recognize the value of this study in providing a path forward on this file, that is grounded in the families’ right to know and goes beyond political, geographical, and societal divisions”.
Enforced disappearance is considered one of the most tragic files in Syria, where the Syrian regime forces have systematically practiced enforced disappearance, as a punishment for its opponents. Enforced disappearances are often associated with other violations of basic rights, such as the absence of trials, torture, extortion of victims’ families, and mistreatment and practices of humiliation, up to secret execution.
According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, there are 111.907 enforced disappeared
persons in Syria, including 3.014 children and 6.642 woman, who are still subject to enforced disappearance by the parties of the conflict in Syria since March 2011.
More than 85% of them have disappeared by the Syrian regime forces. On the “International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances”, Mr. Hadi Al-Bahra, co-chair of the Constitutional Committee, said that “no sustainable political solution could be reached without releasing detainees, and knowing the fate of a huge number of the forcibly disappeared” and called for “pressure on the Syrian regime and his allies to reveal the fate of the forcibly disappeared, and empty prisons and detention centres.”. Al-Bahra stressed the need and importance of “laying a legal ground that paves the way for the accountability and trials of the perpetrators and criminals for what they did against tens of thousands of Syrians who were forcibly disappeared”.