Mass Atrocities, the Responsibility to Protect and the Future of Human Rights: “If Not Now, When?” by Simon Adams

Author:Simon Adams [Adams, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Genocide & War Crimes, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781000330724
Google: XWkQEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-01-26T11:08:46+00:00

Justice and accountability

At a divisive May 2014 meeting of the UN Security Council in New York, Russia and China vetoed a draft resolution that would have referred all mass atrocities committed in Syria to the International Criminal Court for investigation. The resolution had been put forward by sixty-five states and was supported by the rest of the Council. Outside the chamber, human rights organisations widely criticised the double veto, arguing that justice and accountability for atrocity crimes was an essential part of demonstrating to ordinary Syrians that no one was beyond the reach of international law and that their suffering would not be ignored. Although the unstated intention of the Russian and Chinese veto was to protect the Syrian government from scrutiny, an ICC referral would have also enabled the court to prosecute any captured ISIL members accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide.

Then in early 2016 the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, presented a ‘Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism’. Central to the secretary-general’s approach was the idea that policies for ‘preventing extremism and promoting human rights’ needed to be pursued in tandem:

All too often, national counter-terrorism strategies have lacked basic elements of due process and respect for the rule of law. Sweeping definitions of terrorism or violent extremism are often used to criminalize the legitimate actions of opposition groups, civil society organizations and human rights defenders. Governments should not use these types of sweeping definitions as a pretext to attack or silence one’s critics.41

The real challenge, especially in countries lacking strong democratic traditions, is managing diversity and ensuring that human rights are equally protected, while also pursuing targeted measures against groups like ISIL or Boko Haram. Torture, arbitrary detention and mass hangings are a poor antidote. But in divided societies where the sort of structural reforms necessary to overcome discrimination and counter extremism are expensive and time consuming, states often opt for fierce repression and armed reprisals instead.

With ISIL broken on the battlefield, it also became possible to better assess the scale of the horror it had inflicted upon Iraq and Syria. Between 2014 and the end of 2017, ISIL was responsible for approximately 30,000 civilian deaths in Iraq alone. In November 2018, UNAMI and OHCHR released a joint report detailing the discovery of 202 mass graves in Iraq that contained the bodies of between 6,000 and 12,000 of ISIL’s victims. The graves included ‘women, children, elderly and persons with disabilities, members and former members of the Iraqi armed forces and police, and some foreign workers’. The sites included the ‘Khasfa sinkhole’ south of Mosul, where it is believed the bodies of up to 4,000 victims were dumped after execution by ISIL fighters.42

Another key site was Camp Speicher, where ISIL massacred approximately 1,700 army cadets and members of the Iraqi security forces on 12 June 2014. This was possibly the largest mass killing perpetrated by ISIL in either Iraq or Syria, and at least 15 mass graves were later discovered containing the remains of hundreds of the victims.

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