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.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS