In December 2024, the Bashar Al-Assad regime was toppled by a coalition of opposition teams, led by the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham militia, resulting in a widespread outpouring of reduction that the civil struggle, lasting over decade, had come to an finish – signalling the return of over one million Syrian refugees.
After being shut in a foreign country through the Assad years, the Impartial Worldwide Fee of Inquiry on Syria – appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011 to analyze and doc human rights violations and abuses dedicated through the battle – was granted full entry to the nation by the transitional authorities of President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
In August, the Fee launched a report on the wave of violence that engulfed coastal and western central Syria from January 2025, which discovered that acts that will quantity to struggle crimes, together with homicide and torture, had been dedicated.
Massacres in Latakia and past
Chair of the UN Impartial Worldwide Fee of Inquiry on Syria Paulo Pinheiro. UN Photograph/Jean-Marc Ferré
An estimated 1,400 males, girls and kids had been killed in massacres in Latakia, Tartus and Hama governorates, together with by members of the federal government’s safety forces.
Updating the Third Committee of the Normal Meeting – which focuses on human rights points – on Thursday, Mr. Pinheiro mentioned that investigators had performed on-site visits to Latakia and Tartus in June of this 12 months, and extra just lately to Suweyda and surrounding areas.
Mr. Pinheiro reported that his staff continues to obtain experiences of extra-judicial killings, torture and ill-treatment and the pressured displacement of Alawi civilians in Damascus and western governorates.
In Sweida, greater than 30 villages in majority Druze areas have been solely depopulated, looted, and burned, and Fee investigators met many households and witnesses who recounted the brutal killings of family members taken from their houses.
Sweida metropolis, throughout armed battle in July 2025
Stage set for additional violence
There may be rising distrust, he mentioned, between the Druze and Bedouin communities, and the interim authorities, which wants to carry the perpetrators of the killings accountable and guarantee such acts are by no means repeated.
“The Fee is gravely involved that the stage is ready for additional violence if swift motion will not be taken,” warned Mr. Pinheiro. “Rebuilding belief would require devoted efforts for dialogue, inclusion, and justice for all victims.”
The UN-appointed unbiased rights skilled raised rising considerations about violence and discrimination directed in opposition to girls, citing a number of experiences of ladies and women being kidnapped by unknown armed actors, a few of whom had been reportedly subjected to sexual violence and compelled marriage.
“In lots of instances, regardless of reporting their disappearance to the native authorities, households report that no motion was taken but to analyze or observe up.”
Mr. Pinheiro referred to as on UN Member States to halt Israel’s advance into southern Syria which, he mentioned, has seen civilians forcibly displaced and arbitrarily detained, and airstrikes which have reportedly induced civilian casualties: “third-state intervention dangers additional inflaming the battle and inflicting even higher struggling on the Syrian folks.”
Noting current steps by a number of States and the EU to ease sanctions on Syria, Mr. Pinheiro mentioned that such strikes are welcome, and urged Member States to proceed to assist the 2025 humanitarian enchantment for the nation, which is at present solely 19 per cent funded.
