The lives of hundreds of thousands of Syrians are at stake because of the UN’s “overly cautious” interpretation of its mandate to deliver humanitarian aid, a group of more than 30 of the world’s top legal experts claims.
A letter published in the Guardian yesterday, signed by 35 top lawyers and law professors from around the world, argues that the UN humanitarian agencies have the legal right to defy the Syrian government’s “arbitrary” refusal to allow food aid and medical supplies to reach areas under rebel control.
The UN estimates there are now more than 9 million people in need of aid, of whom 3.5 million are in areas that are hard to reach.
The letter — whose signatories include Richard Goldstone, the former chief prosecutor for The Hague war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia, Sir Nicolas Bratza, the former president of the European Court of Human Rights, and several other global authorities on international humanitarian law — said that permission from opposition groups in effective control of Syrian territory represents sufficient legal grounds to deliver aid to those areas.
Moreover, the letter said that under international humanitarian law, parties to a conflict can only withhold consent to humanitarian deliveries for valid legal reasons, during a specific and temporary military operation, for example.
“They cannot, however, lawfully withhold consent to weaken the resistance of the enemy, cause starvation of civilians, or deny medical assistance. Where consent is withheld for these arbitrary reasons, the relief operation is lawful without consent,” the legal experts said.
“The stakes for correcting this overly cautious legal interpretation are high — hundreds of thousands of lives hang in the balance. Humanitarian organizations will surely face enormous risk in carrying out cross-border relief operations and may decline to do so,” they said.
According to some experts, more than 700,000 people could be helped if the UN ignored Syrian government bans on supplying assistance directly to areas outside its control.
UN agencies say they are operating in a precarious situation and have to be extremely careful not to endanger the substantial deliveries they are making through official channels.
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