The Syrian Crisis and the UN Security Council system: an International Law Stalemate.

Abstract

The Syrian crisis has entered its 6th year conflict. The Arab Spring did not succeed to overthrow the Damascus Assad regime. Once the civil war in Syria worsened and implied an external intervention, International instruments were not able to solve the issue, which provoked one of the worst humanitarian crisis ever happened. The UN Security Council is clearly not able to agree on a common solution for Syria. The thesis will analyze the Syrian crisis providing a presentation of the context before the uprisings in Syria, which blew up starting from March 2011. Then, it will present the UN SC dynamics over more than 6 years of conflict and how the Security Council members tried to pursue the so called “political solution”. Many plans have been put on the table, none of them succeded. The Kofi Annan plan, the Geneva talks and the “Freeze-zones” strategy could not bind together the international community to a shared and working result. A right to intervene, a.k.a. the humanitarian intervention, has been always rejected by a number of PM of the UN SC powers, which used their veto right to block any resolution which forced the hand on Syria. Remembering the Afghanistan, Iraq and Lybia cases, the UN SC is now prudent about intervening on foreign ground. The contrast between Syrian sovereignty and humanitarian intervention has never been so sensitive, as it requires the SC harmony to pass a resolution to act in defense of the Syrian people.