Remarks by Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield at an interactive UN General Assembly dialogue on missing persons in Syria

Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield
US Representative to the United Nations
New-York, New-York
March 28, 2023

AS DELIVERED

Thank you Mr President. I would like to thank Secretary-General Guterres and High Commissioner for Human Rights Turk for their leadership on this matter.

Earlier this month we celebrated the 12th anniversary of the Syrian uprising. We have marked 12 years since the Syrian people rose up to peacefully claim their dignity, freedoms and basic human rights. But this peaceful movement soon turned bloody when the Assad regime unleashed a brutal conflict that claimed the lives of nearly a quarter of a million Syrians.

According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, nearly 1.2 million Syrians have been arrested, detained or forcibly disappeared over the past 12 years. And 130,000 people are currently missing or arbitrarily detained. We know that many are being held by the Assad regime, but many have also been captured by Da’esh, the Al-Nusra Front and other armed groups.

One hundred and thirty thousand people. That’s an incredibly large number. And behind every missing or detained person is a family — a family that knows little to nothing about the well-being and whereabouts of their loved ones.

We call on all parties to the conflict to release all those unjustly detained. To clarify the fate of the missing. And to return the remains of the deceased to their families.

But until that happens – for all Syrian victims and families – we must do everything in our power to fight for justice and for the right to the truth. For this reason, the United States strongly supports the Secretary-General’s recommendation that a new, stand-alone agency be established to focus on this work. And I would like to thank the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for its extensive efforts towards broad consultation and improved UN coordination.

We know there are many existing UN bodies focused on Syria. However, there is a gap when it comes to the issue of detained and missing persons. For this reason, Syrian families and survivors led the call for the creation of a new, autonomous entity that can work with all UN actors, member states and international organizations.

Any effective entity should have a broad mandate and be humanitarian in nature. And it should be focused on survivors and address the serious gender implications of this problem.

Dear colleagues, I would like to leave you a message that Syrian refugees have shared with me during my many visits to the region: let the world not forget us. After more than a decade of war, the Syrian people worry that the world just moves on. That we forget their need and their distress.

I promised the Syrian refugees I met that we will never move on; we will never forget. I have made this pledge to the leaders of Syrian civil society whom we have met in the Security Council or on the sidelines of meetings here in New York. And I promised that we will never stop pushing for the release of all those arbitrarily detained in Syria and for more information on the fate of the missing.

This is a humanitarian need. People deserve to know about their loved ones. This is something each of us would hope and expect. And this issue is essential for promoting an inclusive peace process in Syria.

Let’s move this important work forward together. And let’s translate the commitments we’re making today into concrete action.

Thank you very much.

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From the United States Mission to the United Nations | March 28, 2023 | Topics: Highlights, Remarks and Highlights