The Omran photo reminds us of our responsibility towards Syria

What Arabic-language writers are saying about the poignant image of an injured boy

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Rick Bajornas / UN / AFP

A video clip and still pictures of a five-year-old boy who was pulled alive from the rubble following an air raid in Aleppo, northern Syria, has gone viral.

According to columnist Abdul Rahman Al Rashid, the video of Omran Daqneesh serves as a wake-up call – a reminder of the daily crimes committed in Syria.

Writing in the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al Awsat, Al Rashid wrote: “Seeing him and other pictures of the tragedies happening every day brings to mind these crimes against humanity. We are reminded of our duty towards the victims and towards the people of Syria.

“There are millions of people in Syria and millions of Syrian refugees living in deplorable conditions in neighbouring countries. Humanitarian relief operations are their only source of livelihood.

“There are Arab and foreign relief organisations offering aid to the Syrian people, but these are relatively few compared to the dire need.

“Sadly, some associations are seeking profit while others are exploiting the situation these people find themselves in, forcing them to become extremists, haters of their own families and community, pawns in the hands of terrorist leaderships.”

Omran, he continued, is but one of thousands whose pictures we do not see, whose stories we do not know.

“This is the life of an oppressed people living under the world’s most tyrannical regime, in full view of the other powers that could not care less for the fate of an entire nation being uprooted by killing and displacement.”

Echoing Al Rashid’s view, Syrian columnist Wael Mirza said he could not find the words to describe the position of the “international system” towards the events in Syria.

"No matter how we look at it, there is a craziness beyond all logic. It even goes beyond craziness when we think of the decade-old 'Responsibility to Protect' system," he wrote in the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat.

Back in 2001, former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan asked the following question: “If humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica – to gross and systematic violations of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity?”

The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty was formed to answer Mr Annan’s question, and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) initiative was announced in 2005.

“The initiative includes a set of principles based on the rule that considers state sovereignty as a responsibility. It focuses on preventing and stopping four types of crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing,” Mirza explained.

"On August 9, 2010 – months before the Syrian revolution broke out – UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon submitted a report titled Early Warning: Assessment and Responsibility to Protect to the General Assembly as part of the commission's follow-up on the implementation of the R2P concept."

The writer noted that more than five years into the Syrian revolution, and despite all the world has witnessed from the Syrian regime that could be classified as crimes entailing R2P, the UN early warning systems are still unable to pick up the necessary signs to ignite the response system.

As for “peaceful options”, he continued, it is obvious that they haven’t been exhausted and so the “last resort” remains clearly elusive.

“Yes, the Syrian regime has collapsed in the eyes of the world, but there is an implicit agreement to extend its downfall until a conception is formulated to fulfil the interests of all the parties to the regime,” Mirza observed.

He concluded that it was likely that all parties would continue to look the other way.