In its latest report, released Monday, the UN commission of inquiry in Syria finds that both pro- and anti-Government forces have become increasingly violent and reckless with human life as the conflict draws to the close of its second year. It emphasizes the urgent need for parties to the conflict to commit to a political settlement to end the violence. The commission is to present its report to the UN Human Rights Council on March 11.
An estimated 70,000 people have been killed in the two-year conflict, and a rising number of internally-displaced people head toward refugee camps. The numbers, however, are in dispute:
“‘“Syria is the largest IDP crisis in the world,’ said Clare Spurrell of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, the leading body monitoring internally displaced people worldwide. ‘The longer we underestimate the reality of what is happening on the ground, the further we are getting from an appropriate response.’
The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees released new figures Monday showing 2.08 million people in urgent need in six provinces of northern Syria. That’s way below a partial survey of the same provinces that the Syrian opposition and 10 international aid agencies conducted over four weeks in January.
That survey, undertaken by teams of researchers who met with local relief committees, religious leaders and local police, among others, estimated that the number of people in urgent need totaled at least 3.2 million in those provinces: Idlib, rural Aleppo, Latakia, Raqqa, Hasaka and Deir el Zour. That’s nearly three-quarters of the 4.3 million people thought to be living now in the surveyed areas of those provinces.” Taken from McClatchy newspaper, read more here.
