This is a past event. Registration is closed. View other Australian Institute of International Affairs Queensland events.
Event Schedule - Please note this event is now online only. People who have paid for in-person attendance will be sent details on July 19 on how to watch the event online
6pm to 7pm - Presentation online by Alex Bellamy, Director for the Asia-Pacific Centre for R2P
This event is free for AIIA Qld members and AIIA members from other states and territories. Non-members pay $10 and student non-members $5.
Details for viewing online: After registering, on July 19 you will receive a follow-up confirmation email containing further details on how to join the webinar which will commence at 6pm AEST. If you have not received an email by early afternoon, please check your junk folder. Interstate AIIA members can view online for free.
It is difficult to convey the extent of the brutality inflicted on Syria's tormented civilians since the uprising began there in 2011. Syrians have been shot in the streets as they protested. Tens of thousands were hauled into prisons and tortured until dead. Barrel bombs were hurled indiscriminately into civilian neighbourhoods. Men, women, and children have been gassed to death with sarin and chlorine. Civilians have been shot, knifed, beheaded, even crucified. They have been denied food, water, and medicine to the point of malnutrition. Children have been raped, shot, tortured, and forcibly recruited into armed groups. Women and girls have been kidnapped, trafficked, and sold as sex slaves. Schools have been systematically targeted and destroyed. Hospitals and medical centres suffered the same fate, demolished systematically. More than half a million people were killed, more than half Syria's pre-war population displaced. This talk explains how and why the world failed to fulfil its responsibility to protect Syrians. It explains that, ultimately, it was all a question of priorities. Of how other things came to be seen as being more important than protecting Syrians from atrocities.
Picture: Troops move through rubble in Aleppo, Syria. The city was devastated by some of the fiercest fighting of the country's civil war. Wikimedia Commons
