A/HRC/18/53 United Nations General Assembly Distr.: General 15 September 2011 Original: English Human Rights Council Eighteenth session Agenda item 4 Human rights situations that require the Council’s attention Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic * ** Summary The present report has been prepared by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution S-16/1, in which the Council requested the High Commissioner to dispatch urgently a mission to the Syrian Arab Republic to investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law and to establish the facts and circumstances of such violations and of the crimes perpetrated, with a view to avoiding impunity and ensuring full accountability. * ** GE.11-15968 Late submission. For reasons of length, the footnotes in and the annexes to the present report are circulated as received, in the languages of submission only.