A/HRC/35/15 Introduction 1. Pursuant to its resolution 33/23, the Human Rights Council held a high-level panel on the situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic on 14 March 2017, during its thirty-fourth session. The objectives of the discussion included increasing the visibility of violations and abuses of international human rights law and international humanitarian law committed by all parties to the conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic, with a particular focus on the issue of arbitrary detention, ill-treatment and torture in detention and enforced disappearances since 2011, and suggesting ways to address those issues and to bring alleged perpetrators to account. 2. The panel was chaired by the President of the Human Rights Council, Joaquín Alexander Maza Martelli. Opening statements were delivered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic and the United Nations Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syrian Crisis. 3. The panel was moderated by senior CNN international correspondent Arwa Damon and composed of the Executive Director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, Fadel Abdul Ghani; a lawyer actively engaged with the Syrian Women’s Network, Joumana Seif; the former Vice-President of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, former detainee and activist, Noura Aljizawi; co-founder of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently and researcher on extremist groups in the Middle East, Sarmad al-Jilane; and a lawyer, free speech advocate and Director of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, also a former detainee, Mazen Darwish. II. Opening statements 4. In his opening statement, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reminded participants that countless people in the Syrian Arab Republic had been subjected to arbitrary detention, torture, abduction and enforced disappearance. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Commission of Inquiry had continued to be denied access to the country and no international human rights observers had been admitted to places where, very probably, tens of thousands of people were being held and where torture was taking place. The High Commissioner highlighted that the conflict had begun with the detention and torture by security officials of a group of children in Daraa who had daubed anti-government graffiti on a school wall. As protests had swelled, the Government had attacked and waged war on its own people, spawning rebel movements, fuelling violent extremism and setting the stage for a regional proxy war. The High Commissioner stated that the entire country had become a torture chamber, a place of savage horror and absolute injustice. He noted that, as it entered its seventh year, the conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic was the worst man-made disaster the world had seen since the Second World War, and that the desperate appeals of civilians in Aleppo in 2016 had had little or no impact on global leaders, whose influence could help put an end to the fighting. 5. The High Commissioner added that atrocities committed against the Yazidi community by the extremist group known as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), including the abduction and sale of girls and women as sexual slaves, had not generated swift, decisive action to ensure accountability. Vetoes had repeatedly pushed back hope for an end to that senseless carnage and for referral of alleged international crimes to the International Criminal Court. The High Commissioner noted that the adoption, in December 2016, of General Assembly resolution 71/248 establishing the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism to Assist in the Investigation and Prosecution of Persons Responsible for the Most Serious Crimes under International Law Committed in the Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011 had been a significant step forward. He added that OHCHR was moving as fast as possible to set up the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism, which would work alongside the Commission of Inquiry to 2