The former chief prosecutor for war crimes in the Balkans and Rwanda is quitting a United Nations commission investigating human rights abuses in Syria out of frustration at the lack of political backing from the security council.
Carla Del Ponte has served on the three-member commission for five years, chronicling atrocities from chemical weapons attacks, the sieges of opposition-held cities, the bombing of aid convoys and genocide against Iraq’s Yazidi population.
“I am quitting this commission, which is not backed by any political will,” she told a panel discussion at the Locarno Film Festival. “I have no power as long as the security council does nothing. We are powerless, there is no justice for Syria.”
The commission is tasked with investigating human rights abuses and war crimes by all sides in the conflict in Syria, dating back to the 2011 uprising.
It has published about a dozen reports on its progress but has been hampered by its inability to gain access in Syria itself, forcing it to rely on forensics, interviews, photos and medical records.
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Ms Del Ponte made her name as the chief prosecutor at the international tribunals set up to prosecute war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
No such tribunal has been established for Syria and the commission’s calls for the security council to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court have been repeatedly blocked by Russian and Chinese opposition.
“What we have seen here in Syria, I never saw that in Rwanda, or in former Yugoslavia, in the Balkans. It is really a big tragedy,” she said earlier this year, after the bombing of an aid convoy. “Unfortunately we have no tribunal.”
She was the first UN official to explicitly point the finger of blame at the Assad regime for sarin gas attacks in 2013, and vowed justice would catch up with President Assad even if he lingered on in power as part of a transitional deal.
She has been critical too of the crimes committed by the other sides in the conflict, including Islamic State and other groups in the opposition.
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“Everyone in Syria is on the bad side,” she said. “The Assad government has perpetrated horrible crimes against humanity and used chemical weapons. And the opposition is now made up of extremists and terrorists.”
Ms Del Ponte said that she had written her resignation letter already and would send it to the UN within days. Her departure leaves only two commissioners, Brazil's Paulo Pinheiro and Karen Koning Abu Zayd from the United States.
In a statement, the commission thanked Ms Del Ponte for her contributions to its work “and for her personal efforts and interventions to support the cause of justice”.
It wished her well “in all her future endeavours, particularly as a tireless advocate for the cause of accountability and bringing perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity to justice”.