[Naz Modirzadeh is a Senior Fellow at Counterterrorism and Humanitarian Engagement Project at Harvard Law School. This post is written in her personal capacity and does not represent the views of the CHE Project]
There is no shortage of profound questions arising out of the armed conflict in Syria. Yet whether the reported United Nations legal analysis concluding that the UN needs the consent of the Syrian authorities before it can undertake humanitarian relief actions on Syrian territory is not one of them. As international law questions go, this one is relatively straightforward: Absent a sufficient Security Council decision authorizing intervention—a decision which has not been forthcoming, at least not yet—UN system bodies, funds, programmes, and specialized agencies need to obtain the consent of the Syria authorities before undertaking relief actions on Syrian territory.
You would be forgiven for being confused about whether there is a contested legal issue at stake if you had read the
open letter sent on April 28th from 35 eminent legal experts (repeatedly referred to as “top international lawyers” in the press and in an increasingly loud Twitter
campaign) to the UN Secretary General, Under Secretary General Valerie Amos, and the heads of the five UN humanitarian agencies.
US Senator Tim Kaine (who sponsored the Syrian Humanitarian
Resolution of 2014) quickly capitalized on the letter and the caliber of its signatories, sending a
letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon stating that “continued inaction will only undermine the legitimacy and reputation of the UN.” The Senator noted that while he supports a Chapter VII decision, he believes that “the UN already has the authority to act.” He states,
“Based on the opinion of prominent international lawyers, the UN currently has the mandate and legal authority to organize a large coalition of international NGOs poised to deliver humanitarian aid to all areas of Syria. Anything short implies complicity with the Syrian government’s continued violations of the basic principles of international law, and is shameful.”
Strong words—and ones that raise the question of whether the prominent international lawyers who signed the letter anticipated being implicated in the suggestion that the UN’s failure to essentially run the Syrian border against the government’s explicit denial of consent suggests “complicity with the Syrian government’s continued violations.”
There are many actors with blood on their hands in the generational tragedy unfolding in Syria. In my view, the women and men of the UN’s humanitarian agencies are not on that list.
In this post, I would like to provide a close initial read of the letter (whose arguments have been quickly amplified by an advocacy and media campaigns). My sense is that this is a political argument dressed up in the language of IHL.
