The new HDI figures, launched today in Mexico City by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), combines measures of life expectancy, literacy, school enrollment and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. This year 187 countries and territories were measured.

Norway retained its top position from last year, ahead of Australia and the US, while the Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland and Japan round out the top 10, in that order.

However, when the HDI is adjusted for internal inequalities in health, education and income, the standings of some countries fall significantly. The US falls from 3 to 16 and the Republic of Korea descends from 12 to 28. By contrast, Sweden rises from the seventh to the fourth spot.

“National averages hide large variation in human experiences, and wide disparities remain within countries of both the North and the South,” the report says.

The report, entitled The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World, emphasizes the unprecedented growth of developing countries, which is propelling millions out of poverty and reshaping the global system.

According to the report, leading economies in the South such as China, India and Brazil will be the main drivers of economic growth and societal change for the first time in centuries. This growth, however, is not limited to these three countries, and the report spotlights more than 40 other countries that have made greater human development gains in recent decades than what was predicted.

“The situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic has continued to deteriorate,” the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria stated in its latest report, which was released in Geneva.

“Since 15 July 2012, there has been an escalation in the armed conflict between Government forces and anti-Government armed groups. The conflict has become increasingly sectarian, with the conduct of the parties becoming significantly more radicalized and militarized.”

The Commission – which comprises Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, Karen AbuZayd, Carla del Ponte and Vitit Muntarbhorn – has been mandated by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to investigate and record all violations of international human rights law in Syria, where possibly up to 70,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011.

“There is a need to act urgently to ensure that there is justice for the crimes committed,” the panel stated in its report.

“By collecting first-hand information and documenting incidents, the Commission is laying the foundation for accountability, whether at the national, regional or international levels. In March 2013, a confidential list of individuals and units believed to be responsible for crimes will be submitted to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,” it said.

Although the Government has yet to allow the Commission to undertake investigations inside Syria, the 445 interviews conducted from 15 July 2012 to 15 January 2013 found that large parts of the country are scenes of “continuous combat, involving more brutal tactics and new military capabilities on all sides,” according to a news release on the report.

“The war has taken on sectarian overtones, permeated by opportunistic criminality, and aggravated by the presence of foreign fighters and extremist groups.”

According to the report, Government forces and affiliated militia committed the crimes against humanity of murder, torture, rape, enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts. War crimes and gross violations of international human rights and humanitarian law – including arbitrary arrest and detention, unlawful attack, attacking protected objects, and pillaging and destruction of property – were also committed.

Anti-Government armed groups have committed war crimes, including murder, torture, hostage-taking and attacking protected objects, the report continued. They continue to endanger the civilian population by positioning military objectives inside civilian areas. Where armed groups carried out bombings in predominantly civilian areas, it had the effect of spreading terror and amounted to the war crime of attacking civilians.

“The violations and abuses committed by anti-Government armed groups did not, however, reach the intensity and scale of those committed by Government forces and affiliated militia,” the panel added.

In addition, Government forces, affiliated militias and anti-Government armed groups have violated the rights of children. Incidents of children being killed, tortured and raped by pro-Government forces were recorded. Children under the age of 15 have actively participated – including as fighters – in hostilities as part of some of the anti-Government armed groups.

“Ensuring the accountability of all parties for crimes committed is imperative,” stated the Commission, which outlined a series of detailed recommendations – to the Syrian Government, anti-Government armed groups, the international community, the Human Rights Council and the Security Council – and emphasized the need to counter a “growing culture of impunity,” including through referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The Commission highlighted the urgent need for the parties to the conflict to commit to a political settlement to end the violence, which has left some four million people in Syria, including at least two million internally displaced persons (IDPs), in need of humanitarian aid.

UN humanitarian agencies and their partners are reaching more and more people inside the country with assistance. Over the weekend, an inter-agency mission delivered a first batch of critical relief items to 6,000 IDPs in Karameh in north-western Idlib province, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported.

“This joint relief convoy, involving eight UN agencies, demonstrates that outreach is possible from inside Syria,” said Radhouane Nouicer, the Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria. “It encourages us to continue to increase our efforts to reach more people in need across the country.”

Separately, the UN also delivered a significant quantity of medical supplies to Aleppo and much-needed winter items and hygiene kits to Hama, where recent fighting resulted in large-scale displacement in rural areas.

The report by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) states that more than half of 635 conflict-related detainees interviewed experienced ill-treatment and torture, particularly in 34 facilities of the Afghan National Police (ANP) and the National Directorate of Security (NDS) between October 2011 and October 2012.

Torture took the form of abusive interrogation techniques in which Afghan officials inflicted severe pain and suffering on detainees during interrogations aimed mainly at obtaining a confession or information, UNAMA stated in a news release. Fourteen methods of torture and ill-treatment were described similar to practices previously documented by the Mission.

“The Government’s attention and efforts to address these abusive practices are visible and encouraging, and have produced some positive results but the system isn’t robust enough to eliminate ill-treatment of detainees,” said Jan Kubis, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative and head of UNAMA. “Clearly, more needs to be done to end and prevent torture.”

Among other measures to improve detention practices, the Government carried out training programmes on prevention of the ill-treatment of detainees, issued policy directives, increased the number of inspections and reassigned personnel.

The Mission noted that while both the NDS and the Ministry of Interior stated that they investigated allegations of ill-treatment, it is unclear whether any of these internal probes resulted in the prosecution or loss of jobs of Afghan officials for involvement in torturing detainees or for having failed to prevent torture.

“UNAMA found a persistent lack of accountability for perpetrators of torture with few investigations and no prosecutions for those responsible,” said Georgette Gagnon, Director of Human Rights for UNAMA.

“The findings highlight that torture cannot be addressed by training, inspections and directives alone but requires sound accountability measures to stop and prevent its use. Without deterrents and disincentives to use torture, including a robust, independent investigation process, criminal prosecutions and courts’ consistent refusal to accept confessions gained through torture, Afghan officials have no incentive to stop torture.”

Over the reporting period, the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) implemented a detention facility monitoring programme to support Afghan authorities in reforming their interrogation and detainee treatment practices prior to resuming international transfers of detainees to several facilities.

In October 2012, following new reports of torture at several NDS and ANP facilities, including locations where ISAF had transferred detainees, ISAF suspended transfers for a second time. ISAF subsequently stopped transferring detainees to several Afghan facilities and implemented a process limiting transfer to a reduced number of Afghan facilities and increasing monitoring and accountability.

UNAMA stated that its findings reinforce the urgent and long-term need for reforms in the judiciary, prosecution and law enforcement sectors and offers 64 recommendations to the Government and international partners.

In addition to other measures, UNAMA recommends the creation of an independent national preventive mechanism on torture described in the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture.

“Such a dedicated mechanism could be located within the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission with the authority and enhanced capacity and expertise to inspect all detention facilities, conduct follow-up investigations and make detailed technical recommendations on prosecution of perpetrators and remedial measures,” said the Mission.

“Establishing such a mechanism would require concerted and sustained support from the Afghan Government and the international community. UNAMA continues to observe the treatment of detainees and is working closely with Afghan authorities and international partners to bring positive change.”

The recommendations strengthen proposals in UNAMA’s October 2011 report which have not been fully implemented, the Mission added.

The 28-page report, “Race Against Time: The Need for Legal and Institutional Reforms Ahead of Zimbabwe’s Elections,” assesses the legislative and electoral reforms undertaken by the unity government, which was established in 2009 after the 2008 elections resulted in violence. The unity government consists of the former ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the two factions of the former opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The deeply fractured unity government has failed to reform key laws or the justice system, which remains extremely partisan toward ZANU-PF, Human Rights Watch said. It has also failed to hold accountable those responsible for past human rights abuses, including during the 2008 electoral violence.

“To hold credible, free, and fair elections in 2013, Zimbabwe’s government needs to level the political playing field and create a rights-respecting environment now,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “This means amending repressive laws and replacing partisan police chiefs and election officials with impartial professionals.”

Many Zimbabweans are concerned that without the needed reforms elections expected in 2013 will result in widespread violence and human rights violations, as occurred in 2008, Human Rights Watch said.

The unity government has failed to make any changes to repressive laws such as the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the Public Order and Security Act, and the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act. These laws have been used to severely curtail basic rights through vague defamation clauses and draconian penalties. ZANU-PF has not agreed to genuine and comprehensive institutional reforms to end the politically partisan leadership of key state institutions such as the security forces, election bodies, and government broadcasters.

The newly created Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission could help improve the human rights environment, but its mandate is limited to investigating and reporting on human rights abuses committed after the unity government was formed in February 2009, excluding the widespread electoral violence of 2008.

The reconstituted Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has new commissioners, but the secretariat staff is largely the same pro-ZANU-PF team that worked for previous commissions. ZANU-PF resists calls by civil society and the MDC factions for an independent audit of electoral commission staff followed by the recruitment of professional and non-partisan personnel.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC), an inter-governmental body of 15 southern African countries, should independently assess and certify that conditions in Zimbabwe meet criteria in the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections before it clears Zimbabwe to hold elections, Human Rights Watch said. SADC should also deploy SADC and African Union election observers to Zimbabwe early and in sufficient numbers, and maintain them on the ground well after elections to deter violence and intimidation.

The European Union and the United States should also maintain restrictive measures on President Robert Mugabe and his inner circle, including travel bans and assets freezes, pending tangible human rights reforms, Human Rights Watch said.

“SADC should not only call upon Zimbabwe’s political leaders to carry out critical reforms, but clarify the consequences if they don’t,” Bekele said. “SADC and donor governments should not shy away from using sanctions on individuals and other measures to improve respect for human rights in Zimbabwe.”

In its World Malaria Report 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO) notes that rapid expansion in global funding for malaria prevention and control between 2004 and 2009 levelled off between 2010 and 2012.

“These developments are signs of a slowdown that could threaten to reverse the remarkable recent gains in the fight against one of the world’s leading infectious killers,” the Geneva-based agency said in a news release on the report.

Malaria struck an estimated 219 million people globally in 2010, killing about 660,000, mostly children under five years of age, WHO stated.

“If we fail to come together and urgently resolve the shortfall, there will be no averting a humanitarian crisis,” the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Malaria, Ray Chambers, said in the WHO report’s findings.

“Millions of children can be saved in the coming years with methods that have already proven their success, yet we will lose this chance if funds are not mobilized immediately,” he added.

Funding commitments for anti-malaria programmes began rising markedly following the launch of the UN-backed Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a public-private international financing institution launched in 2002.

The Global Fund has supplied more than half of the $10 billion in international funding since 2007, with other leading donors including the United States President’s Malaria Initiative, the United Kingdom, the World Bank, and the WHO-hosted drugs-purchasing organization launched in 2006 called UNITAID.

Key now is how those funding mechanisms will be topped up amid changes in the way some operate, according to Mr. Chambers’ office.

“The replenishment and recapitalization of the Global Fund, which… emerged from a year of crucial reforms in September of 2013, will be a decisive factor in determining if the progress is able to be maintained, as will additional funding from other primary funders, including the World Bank’s International Development Association, or IDA, which is also seeking a replenishment next year, and continued support from the United States and United Kingdom,” stated a release from the UN malaria envoy’s office.

Some 80 per cent of malaria deaths occur in 14 endemic countries, with Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo and India among the worst affected.

According to WHO, the initial funding scale-up is credited with saving 1.1 million lives – 58 per cent of them in countries where the spread of the disease had been most marked.

“We cannot achieve further progress unless we ensure that sustained and predictable financing is available,” said WHO’s Executive Director, Dr. Margaret Chan. “We must act with urgency and determination to keep this tremendous progress from slipping out of our grasp.”

The funding slowdown, which is occurring just three years before UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s deadline for reaching near zero malaria deaths at the end of 2015 – as called for by the anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – is already having an impact on the ground.

“The number of long-lasting insecticidal nets delivered to endemic countries in sub-Saharan Africa dropped from a peak of 145 million in 2010 to an estimated 66 million in 2012,” WHO said. “This means that many households will be unable to replace existing bed nets when required, exposing more people to the potentially deadly disease.”

The health agency also cited a slowdown for indoor residual spraying programmes in its Africa administrative zone, highlighting that only 11 per cent of a total at-risk population of 77 million throughout the western, central and southern parts of the continent were covered in 2010 and 2011.

WHO said the international funding for malaria appears to have reached a plateau “well below the level required” to reach the targets set by world governments and institutions in 2000 with the adoption of the MDGs, which have a target deadline of 2015.

The WHO report states that an estimated $5.1 billion is needed every year between 2011 and 2020 to achieve universal access to malaria interventions in the 99 countries with on-going malaria transmission.

While many countries have increased domestic financing for malaria control, the total available global funding remained at $2.3 billion in 2011 – less than half of what is needed, WHO said.

For its part, Chambers’ office highlighted that more than 90 per cent of the world’s malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, adding that approximately $3.6 billion in additional funding was required for anti-malaria programmes in that region between now and 2015.

It added that, in order to stave off backsliding and resurgences as early as 2013 and 2014, $2.4 billion is urgently required, of which $1 billion is needed in Nigeria alone.

“The momentum to break this disease is in real danger,” said the Director of the Stop TB Department of the UN World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Mario Raviglione. “We are now at a crossroads between TB elimination within our lifetime, and millions more TB deaths.”

The UN official’s comments came as the health agency released the WHO Tuberculosis Report 2012, which finds that an estimated 20 million people are alive today as a direct result of TB care and control. The report features data from 204 countries and territories, and covers all aspects of TB, including multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), TB’s links to HIV, research and development and financing.

“In the space of 17 years, 51 million people have been successfully treated and cared for according to WHO recommendations,” Dr. Raviglione said. “Without that treatment, 20 million people would have died.”

Despite the progress, TB remains a major infectious killer, according to the report. Among its findings, the report notes there is continued decline in the number of people falling ill from TB, but still an enormous global burden, with 8.7 million new cases in 2011.

As well, it notes an estimated 1.4 million deaths from TB, including half a million women, underlining the disease as one of the world’s top killers of women; and persistently slow progress in the response to MDR-TB, with diagnosis of only one in five presumed cases worldwide.

However, the report also notes that there is a $1.4 billion funding gap per year for research and development into new ways to combat TB – in addition to a $3 billion per year shortfall over 2013-2015, which could have severe consequences for TB control.

“This gap threatens to hold back delivery of TB care to patients and weaken measures that prevent and control the spread of TB, with low income countries at most risk,” said Dr Katherine Floyd, who coordinated the team which produced the WHO Tuberculosis Report 2012.

To address this, WHO is calling for targeted international donor funding and continued investments by countries themselves to safeguard recent gains and ensure continued progress. Currently, 90 per cent of external donor financing for TB is provided by the UN-backed Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

But while decrying the funding gap, the report also offers reason for hope. It praises the worldwide roll-out of a new diagnostic device capable of testing patients for TB, including drug-resistant TB, in just 100 minutes. The fully automated nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT), which can diagnose TB and rifampicin-resistant disease, is now available in 67 low- and middle-income countries.

Adoption of the ‘while you wait’ test is expected to further accelerate following a recent 41 per cent fall in the price of the test, WHO said in a news release.

The report also points to the promise of medical breakthroughs from new TB drugs – the first in over 40 years – which could be on the market as early as 2013.

“Indeed, tools to prevent, detect and treat all forms of TB are steadily advancing through the R&D pipeline,” WHO said, adding, “Progress means that a new TB vaccine and a ‘point-of-care’ diagnostic could be available within the next decade.”

“Proven solutions need to be expanded to accelerate progress on child survival faster and farther,” according to a news release on the latest annual report of the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN-IGME).

Formed in 2004, the UN-IGME is made up of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Population Division of the UN Department of Development and Social Affairs (DESA) and the World Bank. Its activities include sharing data on child mortality and improving methods for child mortality estimation reporting on progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight goals agreed upon by world leaders in 2000 to slash extreme poverty and other global ills

The UN-IGME said that gains in child survival, although significant, are still insufficient to achieve the fourth MDG, which calls for reducing the global under-five mortality rate by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015.

Only six of the world’s 10 regions are on track to reach the target. Worldwide, an estimated 19,000 children still died every day in 2011, with around 40 per cent in the first month of life and most from preventable causes.

The report calls for systematic action to reduce neonatal mortality. “Highly cost-effective interventions are feasible even at the community level,” stated UN-IGME, which advocates expanding preventative and curative interventions that target the main causes of infant mortality.

Globally, it notes, the leading causes of death among children under five are pneumonia, pre-term birth complications, diarrhoea, complications during birth and malaria.

Reporting on progress, the report says that rates of child mortality have fallen in all regions of the world in the last two decades – down by at least 50 per cent in Eastern Asia, Northern Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, South-eastern Asia and Western Asia.

Between 2000 and 2011, the annual rate of reduction in the global under-five mortality rate jumped to 3.2 per cent, up from 1.8 per cent in 1990-2000. Sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the greatest challenge in child survival, has doubled its rate of reduction, from 1.5 per cent per year in the years 1990-2010, to 3.1 per cent in the period from 2000-2011.

However, the report cautions, Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia still account for more than 80 per cent of global under-five deaths. Their disparity with other regions is becoming more marked as regions such as Eastern Asia and Northern Africa have cut child deaths by more than two thirds since 1990, it notes.

Half of all under-five deaths occurred in five countries: India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan and China, according to the report, which also finds that India and Nigeria account for more than a third of all under-five deaths worldwide.

Produced by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the Trade and Development Report 2012 says that recent experience, especially in Latin America and other developing countries, suggests that progressive taxation and rising public spending can strongly contribute to the process of inclusive growth.

The report adds that this approach would reduce income inequality while also providing the prospect of expanding demand that is needed for firms to increase investment.In several countries, the richest one per cent of the population now accounts for 10 to 20 per cent of national wealth.

Trends over the last 30 years show income inequality increasing both within countries and between them, UNCTAD says in a news release. The share of wages in total income has fallen in most developed and in many developing countries, including by five percentage points or more in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and by 10 percentage points or more in France, Germany and Ireland.

In several countries, the richest one per cent of the population now accounts for 10 to 20 per cent of national wealth. The report notes, however, that governments can use fiscal and labour market policies to reduce income inequality.

“This goal is worthwhile not only for reasons of fairness and social welfare, but because it would improve economic performance,” says UNCTAD.

More even income distribution also pays off over the long term, it contends, because high inequality deprives many people of access to education and credit, and prevents the expansion of domestic markets. Over years and decades, that amounts to an enormous waste of a country’s economic potential.

“Thus, a better income distribution pattern would help stimulate and sustain economic growth in the short run and would provide stronger incentives for investment, innovation and job creation in the long run,” says the report.

In its review of trends in the global economy, the report warns that growth is slowing in all regions of the world, which it says are “hamstrung in part by austerity measures that are hampering demand in the major developed-country markets, thus cutting the export prospects of developing countries.”

Global growth fell from 4.1 per cent in 2010 to 2.7 per cent in 2011, according to the report, with a further decline expected by UNCTAD – to below 2.5 per cent – in 2012.

Those responsible for the serious human rights violations committed after the September 1980 military coup and against the Kurdish civilian population in the 1990s, during the conflict between the state and the armed outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), have never been held to account.

Hundreds of deaths in custody and summary executions by the security forces risk being deemed time-barred for prosecution because of a 20-year limitation on murder investigations contained in Turkey’s previous penal code. Thousands more state-perpetrated killings of Kurds from the early 1990s could be similarly excluded from prosecution and trial in the coming three years.

“Old laws that curtail investigations into serious human rights abuses in Turkey have allowed the security forces and public officials to get away with murder and torture,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, senior Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch. “It is vital that Turkish authorities act now to ensure there are no time bars on victims getting justice.”

The 67-page report “Time for Justice: Ending Impunity for Killings and Disappearances in 1990s Turkey” looks at the lessons on obstacles to accountability from the ongoing trial of retired Colonel Cemal Temizöz and six others for the murder and disappearance of 20 men and boys between 1993 and 1995. It is the first such trial of a senior member of the gendarmerie for serious human rights violations committed in the course of the conflict between the state and the PKK.

The report builds on interviews with 55 individuals in Şırnak province, whose relatives were murdered or disappeared by suspected state perpetrators in the early 1990s.

Relatives of victims repeatedly told Human Rights Watch that they wanted to see perpetrators brought to trial for the murders and disappearances of their loved ones. Harun Padır was 17 years old in 1994 when security forces detained him with his father İzzet Padır and uncle Abdullah Özdemir, who were never seen again. He expressed a sentiment shared by all the relatives of the victims Human Rights Watch interviewed for the report: “For us compensation means nothing. We just want justice.”

Human Rights Watch’s interviews and the Diyarbakır trial highlight the climate of fear among relatives of victims that prevailed in the southeast region until very recently, compounded by a complete absence of effective investigation of killings and disappearances in the region at the time and subsequently.

One witness in the Temizöz case, İsmet Uykur, saw the murder of his father Ramazan Uykur in Cizre town in broad daylight in February 1994. He told the Diyarbakır court: “Fear triumphed in Cizre. In those days we were unable to go and lodge complaints because there were many unresolved killings… there were people who had seen the incidents in the region but at that time they wouldn’t be witnesses because of their fear; in those days we were afraid of the gendarmerie and the village guards.”

Human Rights Watch spoke to dozens of relatives of victims who confirmed either that they had, for many years, been too afraid to pursue complaints or that, if they did, there was a complete absence of any effective investigation. Their words reinforce the European Court of Human Rights’ many judgments against Turkey recording violations of the right to life through a pattern of failure to carry out effective investigations.

Witnesses reported that security forces abducted and later killed Ömer Candoruk, Yahya Akman, and two cousins, Süleyman Gasyak and Abdulaziz Gasyak, after they passed by car through a gendarmerie checkpoint on the road to Silopi in March 1994. Sabri Gasyak, Abdulaziz’s brother, told Human Rights Watch: “We couldn’t have pursued complaints back then or sought justice. I’d have been arrested if I’d pursued the case. In the late 80s our village in Siirt’s Pervari district was burnt down by the state and emptied. We were taken in and tortured; hundreds of our animals were killed. In 1994 after Süleyman and Abdulaziz were killed, many of our family went to Zahko in northern Iraq.”

The Temizöz case has provided important lessons about the possible obstacles to justice likely to arise in thousands more cases of abuse by members of the security forces and state officials in provinces throughout the southeast of Turkey and also in major cities.

Drawing on these lessons, Time for Justice calls on the Turkish government, courts, and prosecutors to develop a model of victim-centered justice in Turkey. Prosecutors and courts need to offer vulnerable witnesses, relatives of victims, and their lawyers more effective protection from intimidation and attacks in and out of court when they are testifying in trials against defendants who are members of the security forces, village guards, or state officials. Action is also needed to shorten proceedings, which stretch out over months and years making intimidation more likely.

“The climate of fear among victims’ relatives and witnesses persists to this day,” said Sinclair-Webb. “To give them the confidence to come forward, prosecutors and courts need to adopt more effective witness protection and a victim-centered approach to justice.”

The report contains concrete recommendations to strengthen justice for crimes by state actors, including:

- Increasing the speed and efficiency of trials, including by holding hearings on consecutive days;

- Designating prosecutors to focus on the investigation of past abuses;

- Directing prosecutors to fully investigate chain of command responsibility for human rights abuses;

Strenuous efforts should be made by prosecutors and courts to identify members of the security forces to whom witnesses refer only by their code names so that prosecutors can call them to testify as possible suspects;

Witness protection measures should be improved and courts should ensure they take action to sanction intimidation of witnesses and victims’ relatives.

The report recommends that the Turkish parliament establish an independent truth commission to examine past abuses. It also builds on earlier recommendations by the UN, the Council of Europe, and other international bodies calling on the government to pursue a comprehensive plan to dismantle the village guard system operating in provinces of southeast Turkey. The report finds the village guard system, deeply embedded in the social and political fabric of local communities, to be a major obstacle to justice in the region.

Issued today and produced by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (CoI) on Syria under a mandate from the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council, the report states that war crimes, including murder, extrajudicial killings and torture, and gross violations of international human rights, including unlawful killing, attacks against civilians and acts of sexual violence, have been committed in line with State policy, with indications of the involvement at the highest levels of the Government, as well as security and armed forces.

Syria has been wracked by violence, with an estimated 17,000 people, mostly civilians, killed since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began some 17 months ago.

The report, which presents the CoI’s findings based on investigations conducted through 20 July, notes that the situation in the Middle Eastern country has deteriorated significantly in the past six months, with armed violence spreading to new areas and active hostilities between anti-Government armed groups and Government forces and members of the Government-controlled militia known as the Shabiha.

It also notes that more “brutal tactics” and new military capabilities have been employed in recent months by both sides to the conflict.

The report updates earlier findings on the events that took place in the town of Houla on 25 May, concluding that Government forces and Shabiha fighters were responsible for the killings there of more than 100 civilians – nearly half of whom were children.

In early June, the Human Rights Council had called for a “special inquiry” into the Houla massacre. It also adopted a resolution condemning in the strongest terms the use of force against civilians.

While opposition forces also committed war crimes, including murder and torture, the CoI says in its report that their violations and abuses were not of the same gravity, frequency and scale as those committed by Government force and the Shabiha.

It also reiterates the need for international consensus to end the violence and pave the way for a political transition process that reflects the aspirations of all segments of Syrian society.

In a news release issued by Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the Commission underlined that the lack of access to the country significantly hampered its ability to fulfil its mandate, and for that reason it continued to collect firsthand accounts of the situation on the ground from people who left the country.

Established in September last year, the CoI has conducted 1,062 interviews since 15 February. Its report is scheduled to be presented at the 21st session of the Human Rights Council on 17 September.