03/13/2017

Grave violations against children in Syria were the highest on record in 2016, said UNICEF in a grim assessment of the conflict’s impact on children, as the war reaches six years.

Verified instances of killing, maiming and recruitment of children increased sharply last year in a drastic escalation of violence across the country.

At least 652 children were killed – a 20 per cent increase from 2015 – making 2016 the worst year for Syria’s children since the formal verification of child casualties began in 2014.
255 children were killed in or near a school.
More than 850 children were recruited to fight in the conflict, more than double the number recruited in 2015.
Children are being used and recruited to fight directly on the frontlines and are increasingly taking part in combat roles, including in extreme cases as executioners, suicide bombers or prison guards.
There were at least 338 attacks against hospitals and medical personnel .

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03/07/2017 by Dan Lamothe
The meeting between Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Russian Gen. Valeriy Gerasimov; and Turkish Gen. Hulusi Akar occurred in Antalya, Turkey, said Navy Capt. Greg Hicks, a spokesman for the chairman. The meeting, held at Turkey’s invitation, focused on security issues in Iraq and Syria, and “the fight against all terrorist organizations in Syria with an effort to wage a more effective fight” against them, Hicks said.
It marks the second meeting in a month between Dunford and Gerasimov. Before, the two officers had not met face-to-face since 2014, when the United States broke off most contact between the U.S. and Russian militaries after Moscow launched military operations in Ukraine and annexed that country’s Crimean Peninsula as its own. But senior U.S. military officials have called for increased talks between Russia and the United States to “deconflict” operations and make sure that there are no collisions between U.S. and Russian aircraft. That has become more urgent as both countries increasingly focus on overlapping sections of Syria.

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02/28/2017. One of the most important tasks the Security Council is mandated by the UN Charter to perform—and one of the things that it does least well—is to prevent violent conflict. In recent years, wars have erupted in the Central African Republic, Mali, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen, among other cases, while political solutions to long-standing conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Darfur, for example, have proved elusive, with civilians suffering the brunt of the fighting. Humanitarian crises have become more pronounced, and there are now some 65 million people displaced by conflict worldwide, the highest number since the establishment of the UN in the wake of World War II.

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02/22/2017 by Amandine Rave & Laurène Deglaire

The ethical analysis of state funding is designed to ensure the independence of humanitarian action. In situations of armed conflict, it must be dynamic and adapted to the context. Yet, given the changing nature of conflicts, it is imperative for NGOs to constantly review the safeguards it puts in place.

Handicap International works in complex armed conflict situations and takes great care to avoid political instrumentalization and thereby guarantee the independence of its action. It seeks to preserve its freedom to decide where, with whom and with what funding it operates. To this end, and by virtue of its principles of independence and impartiality, Handicap International’s ethical stance has for several years been not to accept funding from states that are politically and/or militarily involved in an armed conflict. Today, this stance is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain due to evolutions in the international context. Indeed, changes in the nature of armed conflicts, the resurgence of national sovereignty, the weakness of the United Nations and the war on terror are all factors making the analysis of a state’s engagement in a conflict an increasingly arduous task. In addition to this, the aid sector is encountering real difficulties due to economic constraints, such as the politicising of aid and the decreasing availability of funding. In light of all this, how do we maintain our ethical commitment to guaranteeing the independence of our action while also assuming our responsibility to take action?

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03/01/2017

The battle late last year for control over Syria’s war-ravaged Aleppo was a stage of unrelenting violence, with civilians on both sides falling victim to war crimes committed by all parties, read a report issued today by the United Nations-mandated Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria.

The report documents brutal tactics employed by the parties to the conflict in the country as they engaged in the decisive battle for the once iconic city between July and December 2016, resulting in unparalleled suffering for Syrian men, women and children.

“The violence in Aleppo documented in our report should focus the international community on the continued, cynical disregard for the laws of war by the warring parties in Syria,” said Paulo Pinheiro, the Chair of the three-member Commission, which was mandated by the UN Human Rights Council.

“The deliberate targeting of civilians has resulted in the immense loss of human life, including hundreds of children,” he added.

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03/02/2017 by Giulio Boccaletti
Much of the world seems to be on edge. The West’s relationship with Russia, the future of NATO, the Syrian civil war and refugees, rising right-wing populism, the impact of automation, and the United Kingdom’s impending departure from the European Union: all of these topics – and more – have roiled public debate worldwide. But one issue – one might say the most significant of them all – is being ignored or pushed aside: the environment.
That was the case at this year’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. Beyond a mention of the Paris climate agreement by Chinese President Xi Jinping, topics like climate change and sustainable development didn’t even make it to the main stage. Instead, they were relegated to side meetings that rarely seemed to intersect with current political and economic events.
Allowing environmental issues to fall by the wayside at this time of geopolitical and social instability is a mistake, and not just because this happens to be a critical moment in the fight to manage climate change. Environmental degradation and natural-resource insecurity are undermining our ability to tackle some of the biggest global issues we face.

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02/28/2017 by James Goldgeier and Elizabeth N. Saunders

In his quest to Make America Great Again by putting America First, U.S. President Donald Trump spent his first weeks in office disrupting relations with allies and adversaries alike. He complained to the Australian prime minister about what he called the “dumb deal” the United States made in agreeing to relocate approximately 1,250 refugees from Australia to the United States; he suggested to the Mexican president that the United States might help take care of some “tough hombres” there; and he declared to French President François Hollande that the United States should get its “money back” for its years as NATO’s leader. He apparently also remains determined to enact an executive order temporarily banning immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries despite the early judicial rulings against his efforts.

Micah Zenko and Rebecca Lissner, from the Council on Foreign Relations, have described Trump’s approach to foreign policy as “tactical transactionalism,” that is “a foreign-policy framework that seeks discrete wins (or the initial tweet-able impression of them), treats foreign relations bilaterally rather than multidimensionally, and resists the alignment of means and ends that is necessary for effective grand strategy.”

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