BEIRUT — The United Nations’ top human-rights forum on Friday condemned Syria for “gross and systematic violations” after an independent panel found evidence suggesting the country’s security forces had committed crimes against humanity.
The resolution approved by the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva adds to pressure on President Bashar Assad’s increasingly isolated government, which has faced multiple rounds of sanctions for its violent crackdown on an 8-month-old uprising.
Diplomats said it also was a call to action for the U.N. Security Council, General Assembly and International Criminal Court, although there was no direct mention of those bodies in the approved version of the text.
It referred the report to the “main bodies” of the U.N. and urged them to “take appropriate action.” It also established the post of a special human-rights investigator to probe abuses in Syria.
Syria’s allies on the Security Council, Russia and China, in October vetoed a resolution condemning Assad’s hand ling of the unrest, in part because they said it could set the stage for a Libya-style military intervention. Russia and China were among four countries that voted against the resolution at a special session of the Human Rights Council. Of the council’s 47 members, 37 voted in favor of the resolution and six others abstained.
The independent panel commissioned by the council released a report Monday documenting what it described as systematic, widespread and gross violations of human rights, including torturing, killing children, shooting unarmed demonstrators and raping detainees.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay urged the council to refer the alleged crimes to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands, saying more than 4,000 people — including 307 children — had been reported killed since March, when major protests against Assad’s regime began.
Syria’s ambassador to U.N. offices in Geneva, Fayssal al-Hamwi, said the panel’s report was “not objective.”
