Beginning in the year 2011, the first 10 years of the Syrian conflict caused the death of more than 3,00,000 civilians. Relating to official death in the country, the highest official estimate of the date of the conflict was recorded, said on June 28 by the United Nations.
HOW DID THE CONFLICT EVEN BEGIN
The conflict in Syria began way back in March 2011 with anti-government protests in various parts of the country. They demanded democratic reforms after the Arab spring protest took its course in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, and Bahrain which managed to remove a few of their Arab leaders who have been holding power for decades. However, it didn’t take long to turn into a full-blown civil war that led to hundreds and thousands being killed and extinguished large chunks of the country.
The report published by the United nations Human Rights Office this Tuesday followed the lines of how rigorous assessment and statistical analysis of the available data expressed civilian casualties. Because of the conflict,3,06,887 civilians are estimated to have been on the casualty list in Syria between 2011 March 1 and 2021 March 31, according to the reports.
The report released by the United Nations did not seem to include the deaths and killings of soldiers and insurgents during the conflict. Their numbers are believed to be in the tens of thousands if counted in. The approximate counting done did not seem to include the numbers who were killed and buried by their family without notifying authorities.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet commented, “These are the people killed as a direct result of war operations. This does not include the many, many more civilians who die due to the loss of access to healthcare, to food, to clean water and other essential human rights.”
STATISTICAL COUNT FOR CIVILIAN DEATH
Almost 1,43,350 civilian deaths were cited as per the report mandated by the UN Human Rights Council. With detailed information, these deaths were individually documented by various sources with much detail, including the date and location of death and to the least their full name.
Adding to this, statistical estimation techniques were used as well to connect the dots where there were gaps in certain elements of information found. Utilizing such techniques, additional 1,63,537 civilian deaths were counted in the estimation for the reports.
MS.Bachelet said, “The conflict-related casualty figures in this report are not simply a set of abstract numbers, but represent individual human beings.” To this, she further commented that the work of civil society organizations and the UN in documenting and monitoring such conflict-related deaths is vital in helping families and several communities establish the truth, seek accountability, and pursue effective remedies.
If the estimate is counted as 3,06,887 that would imply that on an average, for the past 10 years, every single day, 83 civilians went through torture and suffered violent deaths because of the conflict, as per a report. This was based on eight sources of information – that included the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies, The Syrian Network for Human Rights, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the Center for Statistics and Research- Syria, and the Violations Documentation Center.
Such violence and incapacity to handle the rise of such deaths have been going out of hand, and the UN Human Rights is doing what it can to contain the crimes all around the nation.
