Three years on, has enough been done on Syria?
Expert Panel-Fellows of the AIIA |
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 Hilary Charlesworth FAIIA-Professor, ANU; Director of Centre for International Governance and Justice |
 Jocelyn Chey AM FAIIA-Visiting Professor, University of Sydney; former Consul-General in Hong Kong |
 James Cotton FAIIA-Emeritus Professor at the University of NSW |
 Rawdon Dalrymple AO FAIIA-Former Visiting Professor, University of Sydney; Chairman of ASEAN Focus Group Ltd |
 Graeme Dobell FAIIA-Journalist Fellow, Australian Strategic Policy Institute |
 Erika Feller FAIIA-Former UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner for Protection |
 Janet Hunt FAIIA-Former Head of the Australian Council for Overseas Aid |
 James Ingram AO FAIIA-Former Diplomat and Head of the UN World Food Program |
 John McCarthy AO FAIIA-Former Ambassador to Japan, Indonesia, the United States, Thailand, Mexico and Vietnam |
 Robert O’Neill FAIIA– Former Chichele Professor of the History of War, Oxford University |
 Garry Woodard FAIIA-Former Diplomat and Senior Fellow, University of Melbourne |
 Richard Woolcott FAIIA-Former Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade |
Question: Three years on, has the international community done enough on Syria?
Rawdon Dalrymple AO FAIIA |
Where Syria is concerned, and indeed where a number of other vexed issues are concerned, it makes at best only aspirational sense to speak of an “international community”. Australia cannot avoid having something to say on the Syrian issues because of our temporary membership of the Security Council. But it is very remote from our direct national interests and any views we might express are unlikely to carry significant weight. |
Jocelyn Chey AM FAIIA |
I think Moir’s cartoon in the Sydney Morning Herald says it all, really. It shows the husband of a Syrian refugee family explaining to his desperate wife that the international community has united to find the missing Malaysian Airlines plane. In a contrasting response to the Syrian crisis, the same international community has been unable to agree on common action. As a result the crisis may well become a perpetual tragedy like the fate of the millions of Palestinian refugees. |
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March 14, 2014
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February 28, 2014
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