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Over 191,000 people have been killed in Syria, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said on Friday before lashing out at “international paralysis” on the conflict in Syria.
Pillay, who will end her six-year-stint as the UN’s humanitarian chief later this month, has called out global leaders for their lethargy on several conflicts worldwide. After admonishing the UN Security Council the previous day on what she said was a lack of resolve in ending crises, she said that the dwindling interest in Syria all over the world was “scandalous”.
“I deeply regret that, given the onset of so many other armed conflicts in this period of global destabilization, the fighting in Syria and its dreadful impact on millions of civilians has dropped off the international radar.The killers, destroyers and torturers in Syria have been empowered and emboldened by the international paralysis”, she said.
She also said that a total of 191,369 people have been killed between March 2011 and April this year, adding that the statistic was probably less than the actual number. She also said that 9,000 children were killed during this period.
Pillay also said that there had been “serious allegations that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed time and time again with total impunity” and complained that a Security Council which almost always seemed to be in deadlock failed to refer the case to the International Criminal Court “where it clearly belongs”.
The UN had last given a death toll on the Syrian conflict in July 2013 at more than 100,000. Since then, it has stopped giving out death tolls over concerns since it collected its information from different sources working independently, Pillay’s spokesman Rupert Colville told reporters.
However, since working closely with several groups, the rights agency said that it was safe to report statistics again.
“It is important that the world has an idea of the scale of the killing in Syria”, he said.
Colville added that 5,000-6,000 people were being killed in Syria every month.
“This is a horrific number of killings.The most important thing to remember… is that this is not a number, it’s people”, he said.
