The Battle for Aleppo and for Human Rights Accountability

In late January 2017, the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic will release its special report examining the violations that took place in Aleppo city since late 2015. It is expected that the report will revive the issue of accountability for crimes committed against Syrian civilians and further critique the international community’s inability to refer the matter to international justice.

Since November 2016, international attention has been focused on the Syrian Government’s battle to retake the eastern neighbourhoods of Aleppo city which were held by a number of different armed groups and were home to hundreds of thousands of civilians. The battle had been presaged by the Government’s besiegement of eastern Aleppo and an intense aerial bombardment by Syrian and Russian forces which destroyed all medical care infrastructure, wiped out marketplaces and bakeries and led to thousands of civilian deaths. During that period, armed groups had indiscriminately shelled Western Aleppo and the neighbourhood of Sheikh Al-Maqsood, held by Kurdish forces. This too had caused civilian casualties though on a much smaller scale.

The battle for Aleppo was, in many ways, a microcosm of the original conflict between the Government and armed groups which – as a result of the metastasizing conflict – now involved more firepower, more external actors, and more deaths. The panel will discuss the findings of the Commission’s report and debate its impact on any future accountability for victims of the conflict’s many crimes.

Sareta Ashraph, formerly Analyst, UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria

Scott Gilmore, Staff Attorney, Center for Justice and Accountability

Ambassador Stephen J. Rapp, formerly US ambassador-at large for global criminal justice

Moderated by Professor Beth Van Schaack, Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights