عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Arab World

UN Syria Envoy Voices Dismay at Lack of Progress in Constitutional Talks

United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen speaks at a press conference after a meeting of the Syrian Constitutional Committee in Geneva, January 29, 2021. (Reuters)
United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen speaks at a press conference after a meeting of the Syrian Constitutional Committee in Geneva, January 29, 2021. (Reuters)
TT
TT

UN Syria Envoy Voices Dismay at Lack of Progress in Constitutional Talks

United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen speaks at a press conference after a meeting of the Syrian Constitutional Committee in Geneva, January 29, 2021. (Reuters)
United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen speaks at a press conference after a meeting of the Syrian Constitutional Committee in Geneva, January 29, 2021. (Reuters)

The UN special envoy for Syria expressed disappointment Friday after five days of meetings between delegations from the Syrian government, opposition and civil society groups aimed at revising the constitution of the war-torn country ended without progress.

“I told the 45 members of the drafting bodies we can’t continue like this," Geir Pedersen told reporters in Geneva, at the end of the latest, fifth round of the Constitutional Committee for Syria.

Pedersen hinted the Syrian government delegation was to blame for the lack of progress. The UN envoy said he presented a proposal to the heads of the government and opposition delegations, adding that his proposal was rejected by the government team and accepted by the opposition.

The United States and several Western allies have accused Syrian president Bashar Assad of deliberately stalling and delaying the drafting of a new constitution until after presidential elections are held this year to avoid a UN-supervised vote, as called for by the UN Security Council.

According to Syria’s elections law, presidential elections are to take place between April 16 and May 16 — at least 90 days before Assad’s current seven-year term in office expires. Assad has been in power since 2000.

Pedersen said there is no agreed time for another meeting. He will be briefing the UN Security Council on Feb. 9, after which he will give further details about what was discussed.

“This week has been a disappointment,” Pedersen said. “I set out a few things I thought we should be able to achieve before we started this meeting and I’m afraid we did not manage to achieve these things.”

Syria’s nearly 10-year conflict has killed more than half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war 23 million population, including more than 5 million refugees mostly in neighboring countries.

At a Russian-hosted Syrian peace conference in January 2018, an agreement was reached to form a 150-member committee to draft a new constitution. It took until September 2019 before a committee was formed.

A 45-member committee started its meetings in Geneva on Monday. This week’s meetings involved 15 people from each delegation.

Most Viewed

 
 
Arab World

In Ruined Homes, Palestinians Recall Assad's Torture

The last lesson in this Yarmuk elementary school is still on the board, 12 years after the Palestinian camp was engulfed in Syria's civil war. Aris MESSINIS / AFP
The last lesson in this Yarmuk elementary school is still on the board, 12 years after the Palestinian camp was engulfed in Syria's civil war. Aris MESSINIS / AFP
TT
TT

In Ruined Homes, Palestinians Recall Assad's Torture

The last lesson in this Yarmuk elementary school is still on the board, 12 years after the Palestinian camp was engulfed in Syria's civil war. Aris MESSINIS / AFP
The last lesson in this Yarmuk elementary school is still on the board, 12 years after the Palestinian camp was engulfed in Syria's civil war. Aris MESSINIS / AFP

School lessons ended in Syria's biggest Palestinian refugee camp on October 18, 2012, judging by the date still chalked up on the board more than a decade later.
"I am playing football"; "She is eating an apple"; "The boys are flying a kite" are written in English.
Outside, the remaining children in the Damascus suburb of Yarmuk now play among the shattered ruins left by Syria's years of civil war.
And as the kids chase through clouds of concrete dust, a torture victim -- freed from jail this month when opposition factions toppled Bashar al-Assad's government -- hobbles through the rubble.
"Since I left the prison until now, I sleep one or two hours max," 30-year-old Mahmud Khaled Ajaj told AFP.
Since 1957, Yarmuk has been a 2.1-square-kilometer (519-acre) "refugee camp" for Palestinians displaced by the founding of the modern Israeli state.
Shattered city
Like similar camps across the Middle East, over the decades it has become a dense urban community of multi-storey concrete housing blocks and businesses.
According to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, at the start of Syria's conflict in 2011 it was home to 160,000 registered refugees.
Rebellion, air strikes and a siege by government forces had devastated the area and left by September this year only 8,160 people still clinging to life in the ruins.
With Assad's fall, more may return to reopen the damaged schools and mosques, but many like Ajaj will have terrible tales to tell of Assad's persecution.
The former Free Syrian Army opposition fighter spent seven years in government custody, most of it at the notorious Saydnaya prison, and was only released when Assad's rule ended on December 8.
Ajaj's face is still paler than those of his neighbors, who are tanned from sitting outside ruined homes, and he walks awkwardly with a back brace after years of beatings.
At one point, a prison doctor injected him in the spine and partly paralyzed him -- he thinks on purpose -- but what really haunts him was the hunger in his packed cell.
"My neighbors and relatives know that I had little food, so they bring me food and fruit. I don't sleep if the food is not next to me. The bread, especially the bread," he said.
"Yesterday, we had bread leftovers," he said, relishing being outside after his windowless group cell, and ignoring calls from his family to come to see a concerned aunt.
"My parents usually keep them for the birds to feed them. I told them: 'Give part of them to the birds and keep the rest for me. Even if they are dry or old I want them for me'."
As Ajaj spoke to AFP, two passing Palestinian women paused to see if he had any news of missing relatives since Syria's ousted leader fled to Russia.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has documented more than 35,000 cases of disappearances under Assad's rule.
Ajaj's ordeal was extreme, but the entire Yarmuk community has suffered on the frontline of Assad's war for survival, with Palestinians roped into fighting on both sides.
Bullets lodged
The graveyard is cratered by air strikes. Families struggle to find the tombs of their dead amid the devastation. The scars left by mortar strikes dot empty basketball courts.
Here and there, bulldozers are trying to shift rubble and the homeless try to scavenge re-usable debris. Some find work, but others struggle with trauma.
Haitham Hassan al-Nada, a lively and wild-eyed 28-year-old, invited an AFP reporter to run his hand over lumps he says are bullets still lodged in his skull and hands.
His father, a local trader, supports him and his wife and two children after Assad's forces shot him and left him for dead as a deserter from the government side.
Nada told AFP he fled service because, as a Palestinian, he did not think he should have to serve in Syrian forces. He was caught and shot multiple times, he said.
"They called my mother after they 'killed' me, so she went to the airport road, towards Najha. They told her 'This is the dog's body, the deserter'," he said.
"They didn't wash my body, and when she was kissing me to say goodbye before they buried me, suddenly and by God's power, it's unbelievable, I took a deep breath."
After Nada was released from hospital, he returned to Yarmuk and found a scene of devastation.