Targeting Vulnerabilities ISBN: 978-3-902880-66-6 Turkey, Lebanon
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Oral Update of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic
Distr.: General 18 March 2014 Original: English Human Rights Council Twenty-fifth session Agenda item 4 Human rights situations that require the Council’s attention Oral Update of the independent international commission of inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic 1 I. Introduction 1. The harrowing violence in the Syrian Arab Republic has entered its fourth year, with no signs of abating. The lives of over one hundred thousand people have been extinguished. Thousands have been the victims of torture. The indiscriminate and disproportionate shelling and aerial bombardment of civilian-inhabited areas has intensified in the last six months, as has the use of suicide and car bombs. Civilians in besieged areas have been reduced to scavenging. In this conflict’s most recent low, people, including young children, have starved to death. 2. Save for the efforts of humanitarian agencies operating inside Syria and along its borders, the international community has done little but bear witness to the plight of those caught in the maelstrom. Syrians feel abandoned and hopeless. The overwhelming imperative is for the parties, influential states and the international community to work to ensure the protection of civilians. In particular, as set out in Security Council resolution 2139, parties must lift the sieges and allow unimpeded and safe humanitarian access. 3. Compassion does not and should not suffice. A negotiated political solution, which the commission has consistently held to be the only solution to this conflict, must be pursued with renewed vigour both by the parties and by influential states. Among victims, the need for accountability is deeply-rooted in the desire for peace. -
The Potential for an Assad Statelet in Syria
THE POTENTIAL FOR AN ASSAD STATELET IN SYRIA Nicholas A. Heras THE POTENTIAL FOR AN ASSAD STATELET IN SYRIA Nicholas A. Heras policy focus 132 | december 2013 the washington institute for near east policy www.washingtoninstitute.org The opinions expressed in this Policy Focus are those of the author and not necessar- ily those of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, its Board of Trustees, or its Board of Advisors. MAPS Fig. 1 based on map designed by W.D. Langeraar of Michael Moran & Associates that incorporates data from National Geographic, Esri, DeLorme, NAVTEQ, UNEP- WCMC, USGS, NASA, ESA, METI, NRCAN, GEBCO, NOAA, and iPC. Figs. 2, 3, and 4: detail from The Tourist Atlas of Syria, Syria Ministry of Tourism, Directorate of Tourist Relations, Damascus. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publica- tion may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. © 2013 by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy The Washington Institute for Near East Policy 1828 L Street NW, Suite 1050 Washington, DC 20036 Cover: Digitally rendered montage incorporating an interior photo of the tomb of Hafez al-Assad and a partial view of the wheel tapestry found in the Sheikh Daher Shrine—a 500-year-old Alawite place of worship situated in an ancient grove of wild oak; both are situated in al-Qurdaha, Syria. Photographs by Andrew Tabler/TWI; design and montage by 1000colors. -
General Assembly Distr
UNITED NATIONS A General Assembly Distr. GENERAL A/HRC/11/6/Add.1 26 May 2009 ENGLISH/FRENCH/SPANISH ONLY HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL Eleventh session Agenda item 3 PROMOTION AND PROTECTION OF ALL HUMAN RIGHTS, CIVIL, POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Yakin Ertürk* Addendum COMMUNICATIONS TO AND FROM GOVERNMENTS** * The report was submitted late in order to reflect the most recent information. ** The report is being circulated in the languages of submission only as it greatly exceeds the page limitations currently imposed by the relevant General Assembly resolutions. GE.09-13435 (E) 090609 A/HRC/11/6/Add.1 page 2 CONTENTS Paragraphs Page I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................. 1 - 3 4 II. OVERVIEW OF COMMUNICATIONS .......................................... 4 - 10 4 III. COMMUNICATIONS SENT AND GOVERNMENT REPLIES RECEIVED ....................................................................... 11 - 671 6 Afghanistan ........................................................................................ 12 - 24 7 Bahrain ............................................................................................... 25 - 43 8 Brazil .................................................................................................. 44 - 46 11 Canada ............................................................................................... 47 - 64 11 Colombia -
The Documentation of the Sectarian Massacre of Talkalakh City in Homs Governorate
SNHR is an independent, non-governmental, nonprofit, human rights organization that was founded in June 2011. SNHR is a Thursday 31 October 2013 certified source for the United Nation in all of its statistics. The Documentation of the Sectarian Massacre of Talkalakh City in Homs Governorate The documenting party: Syrian Network for Human Rights On Thursday 31 October 2013, about 11:00 pm, a group of “local committees” entered the house of an IDPs family in Al Zara village in Talkalakh city and slaugh- tered a woman and her two children with knives. The location on the map: Alaa Mameesh, the eldest son of the family, told SNHR about the slaughtering of his mother and two brothers at the hands of pro-regime forces Al Shabiha: “The family displaced from Al Zara village due to clashes between Free Army and the regime army which consists of 95% Alawites in that area. The family displaced to Talkalakh city which is controlled by the regime hoping the situation would be better there. When Al Shabiha knew that the building contains people from Al Zara village, they stormed the house and without any investigation they killed them all, my mother, my sister and my brother. My father, Fat-hi Mameesh is an officer in the regime army, he fought the Free Army in many battels. Al Shabiha haven’t asked my family about any information. They killed them only because they are IDPs from Al Zara village which is of a Sunni majority. We couldn’t identify anything about their corpses or whether they buried them or not because they banned anyone from Al Zara village to enter Talkalakh city” 1 www.sn4hr.org - [email protected] The victims’ names: The mother, Elham Jardi/ Homs/ Al Zara village/ (Um Alaa) Hanadi Fat-hi Mameesh, 19-year-old/ Homs/ Al Zara village Mohammad Fat-hi Mameesh, 17-year-old/ Al Zara village. -
UNICEF Background Guide
New York City, NY, USA NMUN•NY 24 - 28 March (Conf. A) / 14 - 18 April (Conf. B) United Nations Children's Fund Background Guide 2019 Written by: Alliyah Edwards and Jasym Mireles Venegas, Directors; Emma Bott and Martina Paoletti, Administrative Assistants NATIONAL MODEL UNITED NATIONS nmun.org © 2018 NMUN NATIONAL MODEL UNITED NATIONS THE WORLD’S LARGEST UNIVERSITY-LEVEL SIMULATION • SINCE 1927 13570 Grove Dr., Suite 294 • Maple Grove, MN 55311 www.nmun.org • [email protected] • 612.353.5649 Dear Delegates, Welcome to the 2019 National Model United Nations New York Conference (NMUN•NY)! We are pleased to welcome you to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). This year’s staff are: Directors Alliyah Edwards (Conference A) and Jasym Mireles Vengas (Conference B). Alliyah is a senior at the University of South Florida studying Political Science and Criminology. Jasym is a fourth-year student majoring in Finance at the University of Texas, McCombs School of Business. The topics under discussion for the United Nations Children’s Fund are: 1. Eliminating Violence against Children and Youth 2. Protection and Inclusion of Children with Disabilities 3. The Rights of the Child in the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development UNICEF is the primary entity within the United Nations (UN) system working to promote and protect the rights of children, who are often disproportionately affected by conflict, instability, and poverty. Further, UNICEF plays a critical role in the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). UNICEF seeks to address a wide range of topics regarding children, such as mainstreaming their significance in efforts to further the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and advocating for their human rights. -
Syrian 'Citizen Journalists' Use Social Media to Spread News
11 March 2012 | MP3 at voaspecialenglish.com Syrian 'Citizen Journalists' Use Social Media to Spread News AP A family escapes from fierce fighting between Free Syrian Army fighters and government troops in Idlib This is the VOA Special English Technology Report. Social media networks have come to play an important part in the political unrest in Syria. The Syrian government barred most media from the country after the unrest began almost one year ago. But that has not stopped Syrians from getting out information to the rest of the world. Many Syrians have turned to social media like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to help spread reports about what is happening in the country. (SOUND) That is the sound of explosions from a video on YouTube. The video is said to show shells falling on the city of Homs. This is one of hundreds, possibly thousands of similar videos placed on social media websites in the past few weeks. With few foreign reporters in Syria, social media have become a major tool for telling the world what is happening. Many news organizations have had to depend on reports and videos from people they call citizen journalists. 2 Emanuelle Esposti has been studying the use of such videos by foreign media. She operates a blog and lives in Britain. EMANUELLE ESPOSTI: "It's very difficult to know where that video has actually come from, who's behind it, why are they behind it… Because there's nobody there on the ground, because there's no reporter there that can say 'oh yes, I've looked out of my window and I've seen this.'" Last week, Syria's deputy oil minister resigned his position to join the opposition. -
Trafficking in Human Beings in Lebanon - a Stock-Taking Report
20YEARS Traffi cking in Human Beings in Lebanon A Stock-Taking Report International Centre for Migration Policy Development 2013 Trafficking in Human Beings in Lebanon - A Stock-Taking Report International Centre for Migration Policy Development 2013 ICMPD Team: Melita Gruevska-Graham, Jenny Andersson Pucher, Elisa Trossero, Dania Younes Copyright: International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission of the copyright owners. International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) Gonzagagasse 1, 5th floor Vienna, Austria A-1010 www.icmpd.org This publication was made possible through support provided by the United States Department of State, under the terms of Award No. S-SGTIP-10-GR-0064. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Department of State. Layout by Jad Harb Printed and Bound by Doculand ISBN: 978-3-900411-86-2 FOREWORD This assessment looks at the situation of trafficking in human beings in Lebanon through an analysis of existing legal and institutional responses. An attempt has been made to identify the current state of play of the main forms of trafficking present in Lebanon, as well as the challenges related to the identification and referral of trafficked persons. Based on these analyses the document outlines the ambiguity and complexity which surrounds the issue of trafficking in human beings as a crime: a crime that is often hidden and intertwined with other migration related matters. -
Implementing Stability in Iraq and Syria 3
Hoover Institution Working Group on Military History A HOOVER INSTITUTION ESSAY ON THE DEFEAT OF ISIS Implementing Stability in Iraq and Syria MAX BOOT Military History The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) first captured American attention in January 2014 when its militants burst out of Syria to seize the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which US soldiers and marines had fought so hard to free in 2004. Just a few days later ISIS captured the Syrian city of Raqqa, which became its capital. At this point President Obama was still deriding it as the “JV team,” hardly comparable to the varsity squad, al-Qaeda. It became harder to dismiss ISIS when in June 2014 it conquered Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and proclaimed an Islamic State under its “caliph,” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. With ISIS executing American hostages, threatening to massacre Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar, and even threatening to invade the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, President Obama finally authorized air strikes against ISIS beginning in early August 2014. This was soon followed by the dispatch of American troops to Iraq and then to Syria to serve as advisers and support personnel to anti-ISIS forces. By the end of September 2016, there were more than five thousand US troops in Iraq and three hundred in Syria.1 At least those are the official figures; the Pentagon also sends an unknown number of personnel, numbering as many as a few thousand, to Iraq on temporary deployments that don’t count against the official troop number. The administration has also been cagey about what mission the troops are performing; although they are receiving combat pay and even firing artillery rounds at the enemy, there are said to be no “boots on the ground.” The administration is more eager to tout all of the bombs dropped on ISIS; the Defense Department informs us, with impressive exactitude, that “as of 4:59 p.m. -
Operation Inherent Resolve, Report to the United
OPERATION INHERENT RESOLVE LEAD INSPECTOR GENERAL REPORT TO THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS JULY 1, 2019‒OCTOBER 25, 2019 ABOUT THIS REPORT In January 2013, legislation was enacted creating the Lead Inspector General (Lead IG) framework for oversight of overseas contingency operations. This legislation, which amended the Inspector General Act, requires the Inspectors General of the Department of Defense (DoD), Department of State (DoS), and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to provide quarterly reports to Congress on overseas contingency operations. The DoD Inspector General (IG) is designated as the Lead IG for Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR). The DoS IG is the Associate IG for OIR. The USAID IG participates in oversight for the operation. The Offices of Inspector General of the DoD, DoS, and USAID are referred to in this report as the Lead IG agencies. Other partner agencies also contribute to oversight of OIR. The Lead IG agencies collectively carry out their statutory missions to: • Develop a joint strategic plan to conduct comprehensive oversight of the contingency operation. • Ensure independent and effective oversight of programs and operations of the Federal Government in support of the contingency operation through either joint or individual audits, inspections, and evaluations. • Report quarterly to Congress and the public on the contingency operation and activities of the Lead IG agencies. METHODOLOGY To produce this quarterly report, the Lead IG agencies submit requests for information to the DoD, DoS, and USAID about OIR and related programs. The Lead IG agencies also gather data and information from open sources, including congressional testimony, policy research organizations, press conferences, think tanks, and media reports. -
Sex Work in French Mandate Lebanon and Syria: a History of Representations and Interventions (1920-1946)
Sex Work in French Mandate Lebanon and Syria: A History of Representations and Interventions (1920-1946) Pascale Nancy Graham Institute of Islamic Studies McGill University, Montréal August 2019 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy © Pascale Nancy Graham Table of Contents Abstract/Résumé iii Acknowledgements vii List of Abbreviations of Archives ix Chapter One: Introduction 1 Regulatory Structures of Sex Work through the Early Modern Ottoman Empire 8 From Ottoman Administration to the French System: Sex Work as Pathology 25 Implicating the League of Nations 39 Public Debates and the Creation of “Diametrically Opposed States of Existence” 46 Colonialism and Humanitarianism: Power and Exclusion 57 Primary Sources and Methodology 61 Thesis Overview 66 Chapter Two: The Power of Medicine: Sex Work, Containment, and the New Discourse of Public Health 71 The Insertion of Scientific Vocabulary into the State Apparatus: The “Truth” about Sex Work 75 Research on Sex Work in the Metropole: The “Indispensable Excremental Phenomenon” 78 The Transmission of Knowledge: The Pathologizing of Sex Work Comes to the Levant 85 The Commission of Medical Reports with the Same Old Message under the New Regime 95 Assessing the Risk of Social Contagion in a Rural Context 108 Conclusion 114 Chapter Three: The Paradox of Liminality: Medico-Administrative and Legal Discourses in Defense of Public Health 119 Those Existing Outside the Law: The Paradox of the French System in the Levant -
Transcript of Episode 9, “U.S. Electoral Constraints, Military Strategy, and the Iraq War”
Transcript of Episode 9, “U.S. Electoral Constraints, Military Strategy, and the Iraq War” Originally released June 18, 2020 [Note: This is a rough transcript of the audio recording, based on digital transcription and human review.] [00:00:00] One, two, three go. Morgan: [00:00:18] Hello, and welcome to International Security’s Off the Page. On today's episode, we are talking about U.S. electoral constraints and military strategy. I'm Morgan Kaplan, the Executive Editor of International Security. And we will be speaking with Andrew Payne, author of the recent International Security article, “Presidents, Politics, and Military Strategy: Electoral Constraints during the Iraq War.” And a little later, we'll go off the page with Emma Sky, who served as an advisor to the commanding general of U.S. forces in IraQ from 2007 to 2010. Belfercenter.org/offthepage is where you can find past episodes [00:01:00] as well as supplemental reading materials. It’s also where you can subscribe to get the newest episodes of Off the Page on your favorite podcast platform. Morgan: [00:01:10] Andrew Payne is the Hedley Bull Research Fellow in International Relations at the University of Oxford. Joining us now, we have Andrew Payne, who's written for International Security a fascinating article called “Presidents, Politics, and Military Strategy: Electoral Constraints during the Iraq War.” Andy, thank you so much for joining us. Andy: Thanks for having me here. Morgan: So tell us a little bit about the argument you're presenting here in this paper. Andy: [00:01:33] So the article looks at the impact of electoral politics on presidential decision-making in war, and the starting premise of it is quite simple. -
Euphrates-Tigris Case Study Olcay Ünver, Dursun Yıldız, Ayşegül Kibaroğlu, Hamza Özgüler
Euphrates-Tigris Case Study Olcay Ünver, Dursun Yıldız, Ayşegül Kibaroğlu, Hamza Özgüler Key messages • Droughts are a regular and not an exceptional feature in the region. They have significant adverse social, environmental, health, and economic impacts, mainly where rainfed farming is practiced and places where there are existing pressures on water resources. • These impacts have played a significant role in population movements, including migration, and will continue to do so, possibly with increasing speed, in the future. • Droughts can play an exacerbating, catalytic, or triggering role in social unrest and political instability when they precede or occur at the same time with social and humanitarian crises such as mass migration, widespread malnutrition, and rural poverty, as in Syria, following the 2006-2010 drought. • Social unrest and political instability make proper drought management very difficult to implement. • It is imperative to address the mutually exacerbating relationship between droughts and social and humanitarian issues with a broad approach to food security and water availability, including measures to increase resilience, manage risk, and establish/expand safety nets. • Tackling droughts at a basin-scale can help facilitate cooperation among the riparians. Evidence from the past involves attempts for cross-border cooperation over coping with droughts and drought management. However, drought resilience dwindles in the region due to prolonged conflicts and economic decline. • Innovative drought strategies can significantly support resilience building and adaptive capacity development at a regional scale at national and sub-national levels. • There is good room to align policies for disaster risk reduction, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and sustainable development. Bio-physical and socioeconomic characteristics of the basin area The Euphrates–Tigris River Basin (ETB), shown in Fig.