Elizabeth Karron
Poland
Human Rights Council
Topic 1: The Situation in the Syrian Arab Republic
Poland believes strongly in the importance of promoting and protecting human rights
around the world. As a member of the European Union, Poland is committed to pursuing the
European values, including human safety, dignity, freedom, and equality. Consequently, Poland
is alarmed by the rampant human rights violations occurring in the Syrian Arab Republic. Poland
believes it is imperative that the United Nations Human Rights Council work with the Syrian
government, international humanitarian organizations, and neighbors of Syria to reduce violence
and address the Syrian population’s basic needs for food, water, shelter and education.
In August of 2011, Poland requested that the Human Rights Council (HRC) convene a
Special Session to address the emerging crisis in Syria. At that meeting, Cezary Lusinski of
Poland introduced a resolution condemning the violence being perpetrated by the Syrian
government against its citizens and urging the international community to initiate dialogues on
how to best address the needs and concerns of the Syrian population. At the same meeting, the
HRC established the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria (IICIS), a body
which investigates human rights violations and war crimes in Syria and, when possible, identifies
the individual perpetrators of these abuses so that they may be held accountable.
These initiatives have effectively increased international awareness of the breadth and
scale of human rights violations in Syria, and they have enabled the international community to
begin prosecuting some committers of war crimes. However, more needs to be done. A
September 2012 report by the IICIS indicated that the scale and frequency of gross human rights
violations in Syria is increasing, with indiscriminate attacks against civilians now occurring on a
daily basis in many areas of the country. Such attacks include murder, arbitrary arrests, sexual
violence, violations of children’s rights, and destruction of hospitals and schools.
The United Nations’ response to human rights violations perpetrated by the Sudanese
government against its citizens in Darfur offers insight into how to best address similar
challenges in Syria. For example, in Darfur, the United Nations increased the safety and
wellbeing of Sudanese citizens by focusing on enabling international humanitarian organizations
to deliver aid to the victims of the conflict. The United Nations also empowered Sudanese
citizens to stand up for themselves in the face of horrendous abuse by providing education, skills
training and income-generating activities.
Using the United Nations’ initiatives in Darfur as a model, Poland recommends that the
HRC mitigate Syrian citizens’ suffering by encouraging humanitarian organizations to provide
food, water, shelter and healthcare to victims of the conflict. Syrian authorities have shown some
resistance to the presence of international aid workers in their country; however, the HRC can
overcome this obstacle by encouraging Syria’s allies, such as Russia, to exert political and
economic pressure on the Syrian government and force it to allow aid organizations full access to
Syrian civilians. Poland also suggests that the council support the initiatives of organizations
such as Amnesty International to provide education and job-training to Syrian citizens. Such
initiatives will help Syrian citizens both to resist oppression and to rebuild their lives after the
conflict is over.
Topic 2: The Right to Water
Poland is strongly in favor of ensuring that all people, regardless of gender, race,
ethnicity, or socioeconomic status, have access to clean, safe drinking water. Indeed, Poland
agrees with its fellow members of the European Union that providing all people with access to
clean drinking water is an effective way to achieve Millennium Development Goals such as
reducing child mortality and combatting poverty. Poland acknowledges that there many obstacles
to ensuring universal access to safe water; however, by systematically addressing these
challenges, the Human Rights Council can effectively help Member States to do so.
Clean drinking water is often less available to marginalized groups, such as refugees, and
to the poor. Because access to sufficient safe water is a human right, Member States should be
required to deliver reports to the Human Rights Council showing that they either have enough
infrastructure to provide all citizens with access to adequate supplies of clean water within
reasonable proximity of homes and workplaces, or nations must deliver evidence that they are in
the process of developing that infrastructure. In addition, countries should provide
documentation showing that water is inexpensive enough that even citizens earning very low
wages can afford it, or they must develop initiatives to subsidize water so that it is affordable for
everyone. However, the Human Rights Council cannot only hold countries accountable for their
obligation to provide safe water; rather, it must provide financial and technological resources to
help nations to do so.
The Council must address the problem of insufficient water supply. In some countries,
such as the United States, freshwater is abundant, in other countries, such as Sudan, it is in
extremely short supply. Population growth will continue to reduce water availability. Indeed, the
United Nations estimates that by 2025, 1.8 billion people will live in regions with absolute water
scarcity. Poland recommends that countries in which water is scarce be required to demonstrate
to the Human Rights Council that they have made good faith efforts to procure sufficient
drinking water, such as digging wells and employing desalination technology to convert ocean
water into freshwater. Since countries in which water is scarce also tend to be poor
economically, such initiatives should be paid for in part by a global fund for clean water
development to which all nations contribute. However, in cases when countries make such good
faith efforts and still lack sufficient water resources, the United Nations should provide
assistance by redistributing water from countries in which freshwater is abundant to countries
where it is scarce.
The Council must also deal with exacerbating environmental factors, such as pollution. In
many developing countries, including Poland, industrial and agricultural runoff sometimes enters
rivers and lakes, contaminating the water and making it unsafe to drink. While Poland is strongly
in favor of improving access to clean drinking water, initiatives to do so should not excessively
inhibit economic growth, especially that of economically poor and developing nations. As
Poland expressed during the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in
Rio de Janeiro, Poland favors global initiatives to develop affordable technologies to reduce
pollution without reducing industrial production, as well as techniques for cleaning up aquatic
ecosystems that have already been contaminated by industrial waste. Therefore, Poland
recommends that the Human Rights Council develop a clean drinking water technologies fund
which would support research and development of techniques to cheaply reduce industrial and
agricultural runoff and purify water that has already been contaminated.