The role of the UN Security Council in Syrian Crisis (2011-2016)

Abstract

Human rights protection becoming the crux of the UNSC actions got officially inscribed as the primary mandate of the Council in 2005 World Summit Outcome Document. Under the Document the SC took the Responsibility to Protect civilians from four types of internationally wrongful erga omnes crimes whenever individual governments are “unwilling” or “unable” to protect their population. Against this backdrop, the UNSC failed to protect civilians from mass atrocities in Syria that erupted in 2011 and is still counting now. Humanitarian crisis in Syria resulted in a death toll of more than 240,000 lives lost. The present paper aims to figure out SC response to the early warnings of counting crisis, the influence that the generally increasing death toll had on the UNSC Resolutions, and last but not least, the research seeks to measure the UNSC resolutions influence on the development of the conflict. Through analysing the SC resolutions, draft resolutions as well as verbatim records of the UNSC meetings for the timeframe of 2011-2016, the research finds out that albeit being well-informed on the unleashing situation in Syria the UNSC failed to provide timely response to the early warnings of looming conflict provided mostly by UN agencies and Western media conditioned with the divergence of interests among P5 countries. The research also finds that the generally increasing death toll in Syria failed to influence SC Resolutions. Most of the resolutions were adopted with the aim of just “doing something”.