For months now, as part of the disengagement program in the ongoing war in Syria, the United Nations has been sharing the coordinates of health-care centers in areas controlled by the Syrian opposition, with the Russian government. The aim is to ensure that neither Russia nor its Syrian allies strike them by mistake.

But the coordinate system is not working properly, and it is counterproductive. During the recent Syrian government attacks on Idlib, 46 civilian facilities were attacked. The Syrian-American Association, the local UN partner in Idlib, reported that 14 facilities that were attacked in Idlib were on the UN list.

In other words, the Russian and Syrian governments know precisely where these bombed facilities are located.

On July 30, UN Secretary-General António Guterres asked for an investigation into who is bombing those facilities, especially those supposed to be under UN protection. The UN should consider whether its disengagement program involves No little use. At the same time, Russia and its allies continue to receive information from the United Nations about where the opposition is located.

This is not the first time that facilities under UN protection have been bombed.In March and April 2018, four supposedly protected hospitals were attacked. Susana Sirkin, director of the US-based Physicians for Human Rights, which has been monitoring attacks on medical facilities since the war began eight years ago, said it was clear the UN system was not working. "Since this system has failed completely, one wonders about the feasibility of sharing with Russia the coordinates of medical facilities."

Risks

Some organizations that agreed to share important information with the government of President Bashar al-Assad and its allies, including Russia, were aware of the dangers and hoped to use any violations as evidence for its cause. "The decision to share information was made after a lot of difficult deliberations," said Ahmed Debs, an employee of the Union of Healthcare, a coalition of non-governmental organizations from the United States, France, Germany and other countries that help manage opposition health facilities. He added: «The idea of ​​participating in the coordinates of medical facilities was completely rejected in the beginning of any 2015, but after the Syrian government and Russia began to systematically target medical facilities in eastern Aleppo, and everyone was aware that the Syrian government knows the coordinates thanks to its spies, so we thought that if we share with them We used to prove that the Russians and Syrians deliberately bombed medical facilities after obtaining their coordinates. They were want to prove to the world that the Russian and Syrian governments will continue even after the bombing to give them the coordinates of places, a violation of international law. »

Security Council

This strategy may have succeeded to some extent in focusing the attention of the UN Security Council on the humanitarian catastrophe that is constantly unfolding in Idlib. But not everyone affected by the bombing had agreed to this strategy, and the surgeon at Maarat al-Numan Central Hospital, Yasser al-Sam, refused to provide these coordinates because it will increase the chances of bombing, he said, but agreed after receiving assurances that the hospitals are protected. “We got assurances that the hospital would not be bombed, but the bombing was repeated on us. "I was confident that sharing the coordinates was a big mistake."

"The regime is a failure," the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Human Rights, which oversees all of the disengagement arrangements, Mark Luckock, told the UN Security Council. "The current disengagement environment is ineffective," said Jean Egeland, a former UN human rights negotiator in Syria. "The attacks in Idlib worry him, and this man played a crucial role in establishing the organization's presence there." "I now fear that many UN-protected hospitals are being bombed in Idlib, which means there is no longer any effective protection," he told Foreign Policy.

Hope in Accounting

Many local doctors and activists who have shared the location of their medical centers and clinics hope to take advantage of the UN's reputation to shed light on abuses by the Syrian government, and say that the investigation requested by the UN secretary-general offers an albeit weak opportunity to get the world to see their suffering, They hope that the results of the investigation will eventually ensure that criminals are held accountable for violations of international law.

The Syrian government and its allies denied they were using the information they obtained from the United Nations to carry out their attacks. In a letter to the UN last month, Syrian government representative Bashar al-Jaafari claimed that all health centers in Idlib are run by "terrorist groups," which are "ineffective," and mentioned four such centers: Maarat al-Nu'man Central Hospital and Ibn Sina Hospital. The Idlib National Hospital and the Jisr al-Shughur Hospital considered Jaafari's message to be an admission that striking "ineffective" hospitals run by insurgents was justified.

contradiction

But all these assurances contradict what local players say. According to the Syrian-American Medical Association, the four hospitals mentioned by al-Jaafari are on the list of UN-protected centers, and these four hospitals exclusively provide humanitarian work. "His organization directly supported the hospitals of Maarat al-Nu'man and Ibn Sina, and rejected the Syrian government's claims that they were run by terrorists," Basil Termanini, former president of the Syrian-American Medical Association, told Foreign Policy. He added: «The Syrian American Association has strict laws, we do not allow any weapons to enter our facilities, nor do we allow any armed group to interfere in our operations, and in very few cases when armed groups tried to interfere in our daily operations of a particular health facility, we stop working “We are threatening to stop all our operations in Syria,” said Safwat Khan Sheikhouni, director of the Idlib Health Department. "It is run entirely by us and is not under the influence of any armed group."

The question now is strongly: “What can the UN do with evidence that the Syrian and Russian governments have violated its disengagement program?” Activists are well aware that the UN's hands are tied in the Security Council because of the Russian veto power, yet they hope it will happen. Anything to hold Moscow and Damascus accountable for their crimes.

Sirkin of Physicians for Human Rights said it would be mandatory to make the findings of the UN investigation public. Egeland said that while the world body may not be able to bring cases against the perpetrators of these crimes in court, it can and should use this opportunity to reveal their names and expose them. Termanini believes that more could be done, and said the UN report should be handed over to an independent, impartial and international mechanism that assesses other war crimes investigations in Syria, including enforced disappearances, torture and summary executions. He said the organization could be asked to bring cases to court in the future.

Humanitarian actors seem ready to do anything possible to expose the Russian and Syrian governments. Unfortunately, there are many reasons to believe that the scandal will have no impact on the Syrian issue.

Anshal Vohra is a Beirut-based reporter

Many local doctors and activists who have shared the location of their medical centers and clinics hope to take advantage of the UN's reputation to highlight abuses by the Syrian government.

Activists are aware that the UN is tied in the Security Council because of the Russian veto power, yet they hope that anything will happen to hold Moscow and Damascus accountable for their crimes.