Syria unsafe for refugees to return: UN expert

QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – The war in Syria is still raging, making the country too unsafe for refugees to return, chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, Paulo Pinheiro, said.

“This is not a time for anyone to be thinking that Syria is safe, for its refugees to return home,” Paulo Pinheiro stated on October 25 at a committee meeting the UN General Assembly in New York.

“The reality is that the war against the Syrian people continues,” he added.  

“Syrians now face a new wave of the pandemic with only 2.1% of the population fully vaccinated.”

The UN expert pointed out that the conflict in Syria had not seized, as there is “an upsurge in fighting and violence.”

Pinheiro said since the beginning of the war in Syria over ten years ago, several hundreds of thousands of people had been killed, tens of thousands detained and 12 million displaced.

Meanwhile, Recently, news outlets run by the Turkish government quote officials, including the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking about a possible further military action in northeast Syria.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released on October 20 named “Our Lives Are Like Death: Syrian Refugee Returns from Lebanon and Jordan,” found that Syria is not safe for return.

Syria provides no safe environment for the return of refugees and displaced people, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said on October 10.