The group of boys, consisting of boys aged 12-16 stared at the school walls blankly for years. Wondering why it was never renovated. Why it looked the same as it did more than 40 years ago. Did they not have the right to redecorate their school? They decided it was time to change the way the wall looked. With their graffiti and markers they wrote slogans they had learnt from children in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. They demanded change.

With that they all laughed nervously at their bravery and returned home feeling somehow liberated; a feeling children only dreamed they had in Syria. Little did they know they had to pay for that sensation. When the sun went down and sleep paralyzed all sensations, heavy footsteps were heard near the old school walls. Every single boy who saw, drew or even supported the slogans on the wall was awoken violently that night. The boys were dragged out of their homes by large armed men wearing uniforms. Their parents screamed and shoved the armed men helplessly. They were paying the price for years of silence.

Unable to understand their crime the boys cried as they were put together in small pickups and jeeps. They were dragged to small humid cells and beaten by large men. A kick in the rib for contemplating change; a blow in the face for asking for change; and a crack in the spine for feeling liberated. They sat in their cells for weeks, beaten and humiliated on a daily basis. As a final warning, their nails were yanked out of their fingers to teach them to never draw on the old wall.

Whoever survived the torture was later returned home, swollen and crushed. The dead were lucky to have never lived life to see the fate of the Syrian children in the future.

Family members and friends of the young boys swarmed the streets of the town of Daraa demanding justice be brought to those who tortured and killed their children. No one listened to them. Friends of friends and passerby’s later joined the angry group, forming a small demonstration. No one listened to their demands. The demonstration grew as more people were familiar with the recent events. There was finally a response. Live bullets and tear gas forced the crowds to split up the demonstrations temporarily. The demonstrations grew larger as angry crowds demanded for nothing but change and were not receiving it. The response was once again bullets and tear gas, however this time the bullets hit flesh. As more blood was spilt, the crowds grew more furious and larger.

The word about the demonstrations reached other provinces like Homs, Douma, Idlib and Damascus suburbs. Touched by the bravery of the little boys in Daraa, more little boys followed their example and drew on old walls. Demonstrations grew larger, demands progressed. People no longer wanted change and reformations; they wanted the complete removal of the old. They wanted Bashar Al Assad and his government to resign. While his grip tightened on his throne, more blood was spilt in demonstrations and more people grew aware of the situation.

The question is, what happened to the children? Did the government learn from their mistakes? Did they stop child torture and imprisonment? On the contrary, after the boys in Daraa, Hamza alkhateeb fell victim to their torture. His genitals mutilated, his body bruised from blows, arms dented with bullet holes and burns from cigarettes, and bones crushed. Him and thousands of children in Syria are paying the price for desiring what the boys in Daraa desired.

This revolution was ignited by the children, carried out by the children, and will be extinguished by the children.

She still relives the trauma of September 10, when an unidentified vessel rammed into the smuggler’s trawler that was carrying Doaa and more than 500 other people, including many women and children, who dreamed of reaching Europe. The vessel quickly sank off the east coast of Malta; there were just 11 survivors.

The young woman, who showed tremendous courage in saving one baby and trying to keep another alive during the three days she spent in the water before being rescued by a Greek vessel and taken to Crete, says she is even more determined to reach Sweden where she has relatives.

But her resilience and determination to survive and to try and save others has inspired many people in Greece, including the local authorities in the Crete port of Chania, were she was taken after being rescued by a Greek Navy helicopter. People there believe that Doaa should be given Greek nationality for her bravery.

“What she did – suppressing the instinct for self-preservation and trying to save two babies – is astounding,” said Dimitris Nikolakakis, a senior public health and welfare official in Chania.

Doaa’s story begins in the south-western Syria town of Dera’a, where she was born and grew up in a family of nine. But as the war escalated, her family decided to flee to nearby Jordan in 2012 before making their way to Egypt. Doaa was just 16 at the time.

She spent two-and-a-half years in the northern Egyptian resort of Gamasa, where she worked as a seamstress to help supplement the money her father made as a barber. But Doaa believed there was no future in Syria or Egypt and so she decided, like thousands of others, to try and reach Europe by boat despite the news of ever more horrendous sinkings and deaths on the high seas.

“Three thousand people have drowned so far this year in the Mediterranean. It is unbelievable that such tragic loss of life takes place on Europe’s doorstep,” said Laurens Jolles, UNHCR’s regional representative for southern Europe.

But Doaa and her fiancé, Bassem, went ahead and found a place on a trawler that was used to smuggle refugees and migrants from Egypt to southern Europe. Four days after the trawler set sail from Damietta in the Nile Delta, it was stopped by another boat. “The people on it asked us to stop. They threw pieces of metal and wood at us and swore at our captain,” recalled Doaa. “Our boat refused to stop and they circled us and rammed us. They waited until we had sunk and they left.”

The trawler sank in minutes. Most of the passengers were below decks. “Some people grabbed ropes hanging from the ship’s masts to save themselves. Some were cut to pieces by the propeller when they fell into the water. Most drowned,” Doaa said. “We were from Sudan, Africa, Egypt, Syria, some from Libya, some Palestinians from Gaza.”

Doaa found herself in the water with 100 or so survivors, shocked and bewildered at the murderous behaviour they had just seen. She grabbed a life belt and looked around for her fiancé. She realized he must have gone down with the boat.

For three days, the survivors floated in the Mediterranean without food or drinking water. They were at the mercy of the winds and currents – and gradually they started to die. “Some people died of stress; others willed it to happen,” Doaa noted. “One man took off his own life vest and sank. Some died of fear, some of cold. The weather was rough. It was cloudy and cold.”

People began to ask Doaa to take care of their children. A man with his one-year-old granddaughter handed over the child and Doaa put it on her life belt. “Then a mother came with an 18-month-old baby girl and a six-year-old boy and asked me to take care of the baby and I kept it too. I watched the grandfather and the mother and her son die.”

Doaa said the goal of saving the two babies increased her determination to survive. She was rescued by a Liberian-flagged vessel some 90 nautical miles south-west of Crete on September 13. “The one year-old baby died just as we were about to be picked up” and taken to Chania. The other child rallied and recovered.

UNHCR’s Jolles said Doaa’s ordeal and the number of people who drowned was yet another sign of the need to do more to resolve the problem of people risking all to reach Europe. “There is an urgent need for a joint European response, based on collaboration among states and European Union support,” he said.

“For the moment, an efficient rescue operation needs to be maintained aimed at saving lives, in absence of other available alternatives,” Jolles stressed in a clear reference to the Italian Navy’s operation which has rescued 150,000 people at sea since late October 2013, including many people in need of international protection.

Doaa, meanwhile, waits alone to hear what her future will bring after such a costly journey. She was recently moved from Chania to the Greek mainland and is staying with a Greek family as the authorities try to locate her family in Sweden.

Source: UNHCR. John Psaropoulos in Athens, Greece contributed to this story

In a briefing to reporters in Geneva, WHO Communications Officer Oliver Rosenbauer said that out of 22 reported cases of acute flaccid paralysis (AFP), 10 had been confirmed as being the result of Wild Polio Virus Type 1. The remaining 12 cases are still being investigated.

The cases were initially reported on 17 October in the Deir Al Zour province in the north-east region of Syria. Due to the protracted conflict, which has displaced millions, Syria had already been considered at high-risk for vaccine-preventable diseases. However, the country has not experienced a case of polio since 1999.

Polio, whose virus enters the body through the mouth and multiplies in the intestine attacking the nervous system, is highly infectious and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours.

Initial symptoms are fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, and stiffness in the neck and pain in the limbs. One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis and among those paralyzed, five to 10 per cent die when their breathing muscles become immobilized.

Rosenbauer said the next step was to look at the isolated viruses and identify where they came from, to shed light on the source of the outbreak.

The 22 people who have been tested are children, mostly toddlers less than two years old. All of them appeared to be under or unimmunized, with some having received one dose of a vaccine and others not receiving any vaccination at all. Rosenbauer said the children came down with fever and were then paralysed.

WHO spokesperson Glenn Thomas added that health authorities in Syria and neighbouring countries had already begun the planning and implementation of the comprehensive outbreak response.

Meanwhile, a UN spokesperson in New York reported yesterday that Anthony Lake, the Executive Director of UNICEF, ended a two-day visit to Damascus, in which he said that the Syrian Government and agency had agreed on the importance of reaching hundreds of thousands of children in some of the worst-affected parts of the war-torn country with life saving vaccines, including those against polio.

Lake said that immunizing children is in its very nature non-political and has no connection to any military considerations. Lake also said that, with cases of polio now emerging in Syria for the first time since 1999, vaccinating children against polio is an urgent and critical priority for Syria and for the whole world.

“To date, the Government of Syria has fully cooperated in supporting the work of the advance team and the OPCW-UN Joint Mission,” said Special Coordinator Sigrid Kaag in a statement from Damascus.

She noted that the timeframes are “challenging” given the goal of eliminating the country’s chemical weapons programme in the first half of 2014.

Inspections so far have been conducted at 17 sites, the OPCW confirmed today. At 14 of these sites, the inspectors carried out activities related to the destruction of critical equipment to make the facilities inoperable.

“The Technical Secretariat continues to assist Syria in Damascus in finalising its initial formal declaration covering its chemical weapons and related facilities,” the OPCW noted on its website.

Meanwhile, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is racing against time to help Syrians prepare for oncoming winter as temperatures across the region are already dropping.

Spokesperson Adrian Edwards told journalists in Geneva that UNHCR relief aid has been delivered to some 2,500 people who have now been evacuated from Mouadamiya in Rural Damascus, where thousands are still believed to be trapped.

In addition to monitoring the general condition and protection concerns of these internally displaced people, UNHCR delivered relief items including mattresses, blankets, cooking sets, hygienic supplies and other aid.

Last week, through local partners, UNHCR delivered aid within the hard-to-reach city of Raqqa to more than 10,000 people. Raqqa, located in northern Iraq, hosts internally displaced people from Deir es Zour and from Aleppo, 160 kilometres to the west.

“UNHCR observed that many of the displaced are living in buildings that lack windows, doors and electricity. People in this area will soon urgently require thermal blankets and plastic sheets to deal with winter temperatures,” Edwards said.

“Virtually every town and city across Syria is affected by the conflict or hosts traumatized, displaced people,” the spokesperson said.

Women told us they lacked privacy in the collective shelters, Edwards noted. He added concerns about the vulnerability of women, many heading broken households.

In addition, the UN agency is worried about the impact of the crisis on young people, almost two million of whom have dropped out of school and a growing number of which are being exploited for labour or recruited into armed groups.

Through the unanimous adoption of resolution 2118 (2013), the Council called for the speedy implementation of procedures drawn up by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) “for the expeditious destruction of the Syrian Arab Republic’s chemical weapons programme and stringent verification thereof.”

In the text, the Council underscored “that no party in Syria should use, develop, produce, acquire, stockpile, retain, or transfer chemical weapons.”

Defiance of the resolution, including unauthorized transfer of chemical weapons, or any use of chemical weapons by anyone in Syria, would bring about measures under the UN Charter’s binding Chapter VII, which can include sanctions or stronger coercive action, the Council said.

The 15-member body added that it would work with the OPCW in deploying a chemical weapons “monitoring and destruction team” – expecting the full cooperation of the Syrian Government – and it appealed to UN Member States for support, including personnel, expertise, funding and equipment.

It also authorized Member States to acquire, control, transport, transfer and destroy chemical weapons identified by the Director-General of the OPCW, in a way consistent with the Chemical Weapons Convention and the interest of non-proliferation.

“Today’s historic resolution is the first hopeful news on Syria in a long time,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Council following the adoption. “For many months, I have said that the confirmed use of chemical weapons in Syria would require a firm, united response.

“Tonight, the international community has delivered,” he stated.

“As we mark this important step, we must never forget that the catalogue of horrors in Syria continues with bombs and tanks, grenades and guns,” Ban added. “A red light for one form of weapons does not mean a green light for others. This is not a license to kill with conventional weapons. All the violence must end. All the guns must fall silent.”

Earlier yesterday, Ban’s spokesperson said that the UN team led by Swedish scientist ?ke Sellström has been able to resume its fact-finding activities related to all pending credible allegations of chemical weapons use, following its return to Syria this week.

Those allegations include, he said, the 19 March incident at Khan al-Asal, reported first by Syria and subsequently by other Member States. As previously agreed with Syria, the other allegations to be investigated include the 13 April incident at Sheikh Maqsud, reported by the United States, and the 29 April incident at Saraqueb, reported by France and the United Kingdom.

In addition, he said, the mission has continued to follow-up with the Government of Syria and to evaluate information it has provided on three additional allegations, including the incidents at Bahhariyeh on 22 August, at Jobar on 24 August, and at Sahnaya on 25 August.

The team, assisted by experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the OPCW, visited the country last month and found “clear and convincing evidence” that Sarin gas was used in an incident that occurred on 21 August in the Ghouta area on the outskirts of Damascus in which hundreds of people were reportedly killed.

Under the General Assembly-approved guidelines, the spokesperson recalled, the mission is obliged to evaluate all available information related to all allegations reported by Member States, for the purpose of preparing its final report.

Also in today’s resolution, the Council endorsed a plan for a Syrian-led process, with participation of all parties, to end the conflict, which has claimed over 100,000 lives since it began in March 2011 and has led to over 2 million people fleeing the country, with some 4 million internally displaced.

It also called for convening, as soon as possible, an international peace conference that is fully representative of the Syrian people.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Mr. Ban said the aim is to hold the conference in mid-November. “The United Nations is ready to host Geneva II. It is time for the parties to focus on how to build the peaceful, democratic future Syria needs. All those with influence on the parties must use that influence now. It is crucial to keep up the momentum.

“Today can and must be a stepping stone to peace.”

“All parties to the conflict in Syria must comply with the rules of international humanitarian law to protect civilians against the violence of conflict at all times. It is our moral duty to remind them of their obligation to do so and to protect the provision of medical and humanitarian assistance in Syria. Violence against civilians in Syria must stop now. Expansion of current humanitarian efforts is urgently required, independent of political efforts to resolve the conflict. We call upon all parties to the conflict to:

- immediately uphold their obligation to protect civilians as well as medical personnel, facilities and transport;

- allow and facilitate immediate and unimpeded humanitarian access to the whole of the territory;

- guarantee without delay the safety and security of humanitarian personnel in the exercise of their duties

Imagine that the city you live in, the place where you work and where your children go to school are all being destroyed. Not quickly from one day to another, but in a slow, gradual and unpredictable manner. Imagine the uncertainty and stress you would feel at the thought of tomorrow. Will the next house destroyed be my neighbour’s? Will it be mine? This is the tragic and unbearable reality for people living in Syria.

We want people around the world to understand that the on-going conflict in Syria has real and tangible consequences for ordinary people. So even though much of the discussion and coverage of the crisis tends to focus on the political and military situation, we must not lose sight of the day-to-day impact on people living in Syria.

The tragic conflict in Syria has continued for more than two years. Thousands of civilians have been killed every month and those who survive – whether in Syria or in its neighboring countries – suffer unprecedented humanitarian hardship.

We are shocked by the growing tragic consequences of the conflict. Fighting and violence have reached intolerable levels, leading to unbearable suffering, loss of human life, refugees-flows, massive displacement of people and material destruction. Despite the efforts to increase protection for all affected civilians in Syria and in neighbouring countries, the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate dramatically and many civilians remain cut off from humanitarian assistance. We are particularly concerned about the most vulnerable, especially children and women.

The numbers speak for themselves. More than 100.000 people are estimated to have been killed during the war and 465.000 injured. More than 2 million refugees including 1 million of children have already left Syria, while 4.3 million including 2 millions of children have been forced from their homes, but remain within the Syrian borders. These numbers continue to increase daily.

We are appalled by the use of chemical weapons in Syria, which have taken so many civilian lives, including numerous women and children. We condemn in the strongest terms the use of such weapons of mass destruction. The use of chemical weapons by anyone under any circumstances is a grave violation of international law and an outrageous war crime. There should be no impunity for such acts and any perpetrators must be brought to justice.

All parties to the conflict have the responsibility to comply with the rules of international humanitarian law, including the principles of distinction, proportionality and humanity to protect civilians against the violence of conflict at all times. We have a moral obligation to remind and influence all parties to respect their obligations and to protect the provision of medical and humanitarian assistance in Syria.

In particular, we are greatly concerned that medical infrastructure has been severely damaged or destroyed. According to the UN, 60% of the public hospitals have been affected, many badly damaged and almost 40% completely unusable. Almost 80% of ambulances in the country have been damaged and, alarmingly, some are being misused for combat purposes. Convoys are regularly checked and medical supplies are often being seized. Patients, medical personnel, facilities and vehicles are being deliberately targeted by those involved in the hostilities. Medical facilities, including hospitals, are being exploited for combat purposes, and some are even being used as torture and detention centres.

As a result of the damage to health facilities, lack of qualified health personnel and insecurity, many people cannot consistently access medical care. This deprives them of basic medical services placing in particular women and children at significant risk, as well as those who suffer from chronic diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. The disruption of vaccination programmes, damage to water and sanitation services, and destruction of homes and shelters also places people at substantial risk of infectious diseases. Outbreak of measles and diarrhea have already been documented.

In some instances, life-saving surgical supplies have been removed from aid convoys. We are also seeing too many civilians dying of injuries, which they could have survived, if only timely medical assistance was available. At the same time, humanitarian organizations continue to face dire conditions as they attempt to access victims.

Violence against civilians in Syria must stop now. Expansion of current humanitarian efforts is urgently required, independent of political efforts to resolve the conflict.

We express our gratitude to the humanitarian workers from various UN, international and domestic organisations, who put their lives at risk on the ground every day to deliver humanitarian supplies to all the civilians under extraordinary difficult circumstances. We wish to praise the courage and solidarity of ordinary men and women in their efforts to relieve the suffering of their families and neighbours in such a dire and tragic situation.

We call upon all parties to the conflict to immediately uphold their obligation to protect civilians as well as medical personnel, facilities and transport. They must allow and facilitate immediate and unimpeded humanitarian access to the whole of the territory, including delivery of medical care and humanitarian assistance on a non-discriminatory basis. We urge all parties to guarantee the safety and security of humanitarian personnel in the exercise of their duties.”

List of Ministers of Foreign Affairs who sign the joint article: Michael Spindelegger, Vice-Chancellor & Federal Minister for European and International Affairs, Austria; Didier Reynders, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and European Affairs, Belgium; Kristian Vigenin, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Bulgaria; Charles Koffi Diby, Minister of State, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Côte d’Ivoire; Vesna Pusić, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, Republic of Croatia; Ioannis Kasoulides, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Cyprus; Jan Kohout, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Czech Republic; Christian Friis Bach, Minister for Development Cooperation, Denmark; Nabil Fahmy, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arab Republic of Egypt; Urmaes Paet, Deputy Prime-Minister and Foreign Minister, Greece; Kristalina Georgieva, International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis response Commissioner, European Commission; Heidi Hautala, Minister for International Development, Finland; Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Estonia; Evangelos Venizelos, Deputy Prime-Minister and Foreign Minister, Greece; Janos Martonyi, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hungary; Dr. Marty M. Natalegawa, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia; Eamon Gilmore T.D., Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ireland; Edgars Rinkēvičs, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Latvia; Jean Asselborn, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg; Lilianne Ploumen, Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, The Netherlands; Radoslaw Sikorski, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Poland; Miroslav Lajčák, Deputy-Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, Slovakia; Karl Erjavec, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Slovenia; D. José Manuel García-Margallo y Marfil, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Spain; Didier Burkhalter, Federal Counsellor in charge of Foreign Affairs, Switzerland; Surapong Tovichakchaikul, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kingdom of Thailand.

A statement issued by his spokesperson in New York confirms that the Secretary-General, in his capacity of the depositary of the 1992 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, yesterday received the formal instrument of accession to the treaty by Syria.

“The Convention will enter into force for [Syria] on the 30th day following the date of deposit of this instrument of accession, namely on 14 October 2013,” the statement says, adding that the Convention can be acceded to at any time and that the UN chief welcomes Syria’s decision.

In a separate statement released earlier yesterday, Ban welcomed the agreement reached by Russian Federation Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and United States Secretary of State John Kerry on a framework for the safeguarding and destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles.

Announcement of the deal came after three days of intense talks in Geneva, Switzerland, between Lavrov and Kerry. It culminates a week of diplomatic activity noted by the media, kicked off earlier by the announcement of Russia’s proposal for Damascus to surrender its chemical weapons and place them under international control.

On Thursday, a UN spokesperson confirmed that the Secretary-General had received a letter from the Damascus informing him that Syrian President Bassar Al-Assad planned to sign and abide by the Chemical Weapons Convention.

In the meantime, evidence collected by a UN team probing possible chemical weapons use in Syria on 21 August is being examined by laboratories in Europe. The team, which the Secretary-General has said is “working around the clock,” is expected to submit its report to him in due course.

In the statement issued yesterday, Ban looks forward to learning more of this framework agreed by Russia and the United States and pledges the support of the United Nations in its implementation.

“The Secretary-General expresses his fervent hope that the agreement will, first, prevent any future use of chemical weapons in Syria and, second, help pave the path for a political solution to stop the appalling suffering inflicted on the Syrian people,” says the statement.

As for talks on a political path out of the more than two year crisis, United Nations-Arab League Joint Representative Lakhdar Brahimi has been pressing ahead with his efforts towards the holding of a long-proposed international peace conference on Syria, commonly referred to as “Geneva II”, after the Swiss city in which it would be held.

On Friday, Brahimi hosted at UN Headquarters in Geneva talks with Lavrov and Kerry on the convening of the conference. In remarks to the press, the envoy said: “The work you are doing is extremely important in itself […] but also important for all those working with you to bring forward the Geneva conference successfully.”

At a press conference held at UN Headquarters in Geneva after the meeting, Mr. Brahimi spoke alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and United States Secretary of State John Kerry. The two Government officials have been meeting in Geneva since Thursday discussing a Russian proposal for Syria to place its chemical weapons under international control.

“The work you are doing is extremely important in itself … but also important for all those working with you to bring forward the Geneva conference successfully,” Mr. Brahimi told reporters, referring to the long-proposed international peace conference on Syria commonly referred to as “Geneva II.”

Mr. Brahimi has been hard at work on the diplomatic front to bring the conference to fruition, including in discussions last week at the G20 Summit in St. Petersburg. The goal of a second Geneva conference would to be to achieve a political solution to the conflict through a comprehensive agreement between the Syrian Government and the opposition for the full implementation of the Geneva communiqué, adopted after the first international meeting on the issue on 30 June 2012.

In his comments, Mr. Kerry thanked the United Nations and Mr. Brahimi for hosting discussions on Geneva II. Those discussions have been productive and timely, as he and Mr. Lavrov were meeting on Russia’s recent initiative to “gain control of, remove and destroy chemical weapons in Syria and we would both agree that we have constructive conversations.”

“President is Obama is deeply committed to a negotiated solution and we know that Russia is likewise. We are working hard to find common ground to make that happen. We have both agreed to do homework required to make it happen,” Mr. Kerry said, announcing that he and Mr. Lavrov planned to meet in New York during the general debate of the UN General Assembly, which will open on 24 September.

While the two leaders would further consider the matter, including possibly settling on a date for the Geneva II conference, much of the way ahead “will depend on achieving success in the next hours and days” on the question of Syria’s chemical weapons, Mr. Kerry said.

“Both of us, Sergei Lavrov and I, our countries, our Presidents, are deeply concerned about the death toll and destruction and the acts on all sides that are creating more and more refugees, more and more of a humanitarian catastrophe,” he said, adding that the two Governments were committed to working together.

Speaking next, Mr. Lavrov said that now that Syria has signed the legislative decree providing for the accession of Syria to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, “we have to engage our professionals … and the United Nations to design a road so that the issue is resolved quickly, professionally as soon as practical.

“We are very glad that Mr. Brahimi has invited us to discuss a longer term goal for Syria, namely preparations for the so-called Geneva II conference. From the very beginning of the Syrian conflict, Russia and the Russian President have been promoting a peaceful resolution,” he said.

Mr Lavrov noted that Russia had initiated of the conference from which had emerged the Geneva communiqué agreed and signed “by nearly all the major players, including the United Nations, countries in the region and the P-5 [the permanent members of the Security Council].”

“It is very unfortunate that for a long period the communiqué was basically abandoned and we were not able to have Security Council endorsement of the very important document as is,” he said, thanking Mr. Kerry for his efforts to re-energize the communiqué and work with Russia towards its implementation including through the holding of a new Geneva conference. He said he was very grateful for the discussions with Mr. Brahimi.

Meanwhile, the President of the UN Human Rights Council, which is currently in session in Geneva, issued a letter to both Mr. Lavrov and Mr. Kerry drawing their attention o the work of the independent international commission of inquiry on Syria, which the Council established in 2011.

The Council President, Ambassador Remigiusz Henczel of Poland stressed that the commission had yet to be granted access to Syria, despite repeated calls on Damascus to allow the experts to enter the country. The Council President suggests that the Russian and US officials might take up the matter during the scope of their meetings in Geneva.

The commission presented its latest report to the Human Rights Council on Monday, citing ongoing incidents of murder, rape, torture, widespread attacks on civilians and hostage-taking committed by Syrian forces and anti-Government armed groups. It said that “the perpetrators of these violations and crimes, on all sides, act in defiance of international law. They do not fear accountability.”

The panel, which described Syria today as “a battlefield [where] massacres are perpetrated with impunity [and] and untold number of Syrians have disappeared,” reported that Government and pro-Government forces in Syria have continued to conduct widespread attacks on the civilian population with impunity, committing murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearance as crimes against humanity, stressed that there is no military solution to the conflict.

MEPs strongly condemn the mass killing of civilians with chemical weapons on 21 August 2013 in the outskirts of Damascus and urge that measures be taken to prevent any further use of chemical weapons in Syria or elsewhere. They say the UN Security Council must get the report of the UN inspection team as soon as possible and they also voice support for the proposal to hand the Syrian chemical weapons to international community for its destruction as soon as possible.

The international community’s ultimatum must be accompanied by a binding United Nations Security Council resolution, which, if not respected, could be imposed on the basis of “all the instruments provided for in the United Nations Charter”, MEPs underline.

Parliament says Russia and China must face their responsibility as permanent members of the Security Council to achieve a common position and a diplomatic solution to the Syrian crisis. In the event of a persistent blockage in the Security Council, the matter could be referred to the UN General Assembly, MEPs stress.

A lasting solution to the current crisis in Syria can be achieved only through an inclusive political process backed by the international community, MEPs say. They call for President Bashar Assad and his regime to step aside.

The EU must live up to its humanitarian responsibility and step up its assistance to Syrian refugees, MEPs say, urging all sides of the conflict to facilitate the provision of humanitarian aid and assistance.

“The Secretary-General welcomes, therefore, President Obama’s decision to take time to further explore this diplomatic opportunity to achieve this crucially important objective,” a UN spokesman said in New York.

Mr. Ban’s statement follows a flurry of diplomatic activity noted by the media in the past 72 hours, following a reported Russian proposal for Damascus to surrender its chemical weapons and place them under international control. In the meantime, evidence collected by a UN team probing possible chemical weapons use in Syria on 21 August is being examined by laboratories in Europe.

In a national address last night, US President Barack Obama cited “encouraging signs in recent days” and announced that he was sending US Secretary of State John Kerry to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva on Thursday for further talks, and that he would continue discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Both countries are permanent members of the UN Security Council – along with China France and the United Kingdom – which has been deadlocked over a solution to the 30 month crisis in Syria.

The UN chief welcomed the efforts by the Russian Federation to advance a possible agreement. “He hopes the US-Russian meetings later this week will be productive in moving toward a process for addressing the Syrian chemical weapons threat which all parties will be committed to,” the spokesperson said.

“The confirmed use of chemical weapons would be an outrageous crime for which there must be accountability and determined efforts to prevent any recurrence,” the statement said.