The past year has been a devastating one for civilians affected by war and human rights violations, and world governments continue to "pay lip service to the importance of protecting civilians," Amnesty International said in its new State of the World report, calling the global response "shameful and ineffective."
The world's politicians have "miserably failed to protect those in greatest need," wrote Salil Shetty, the organization's secretary general. "International humanitarian law - the law that governs the conduct of armed conflict - could not be clearer. Attacks must never be directed against civilians."
But time and time again, Salil wrote, "civilians bore the brunt of the conflict."
From Syria to Ukraine, Nigeria to Gaza, millions of civilians have been subjected to horrific violence and human rights violations in 2014 and 2015, and the number of displaced people exceeded 50 million last year for the first time since World War ll, Amnesty said, adding that the outlook for 2015 isn't much better.
In 2014, "politicians repeatedly trampled on the rules protecting civilians - or looked away from the deadly violations of these rules committed by others," Shetty said.
The wealthier countries didn't do enough to shelter displaced refugees, Amnesty said, and even governments that were the most outspoken about the failures of other governments demonstrated reluctance to provide essential assistance to refugees, in terms of both financial assistance and resettlement accommodations. The group pointed out that only 2 percent of Syrian refugees had been resettled by the end of 2014.
"It is abhorrent to see how wealthy countries' efforts to keep people out take precedence over their efforts to keep people alive," Shetty said.
Amnesty criticized the United Nations for repeatedly failing to address the Syrian crisis in earlier years, "when countless lives could still have been saved." In the past four years, over 200,000 people have died, mostly civilians, some 4 million are refugees in other countries, and more than 7.6 million are still displaced inside Syria, according to Amnesty.
The five permanent countries of the U.N. Security Council with veto power should "adopt a code of conduct agreeing to voluntarily refrain from using the veto" in cases where genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity are being committed, Amnesty said.
Instead of using their veto power in the interest of humanity, the five countries - the U.S., U.K., China, France and Russia - used their veto to "promote their political self interest or geopolitical interest above the interest of protecting civilians."
When it comes to human rights violations and torture practices, some of which were thoroughly documented in a U.S. Senate report in December, Amnesty said that although government leaders often justify human rights violations by saying the practices keep their country "safe," the reality is the exact opposite. "Such violations are one important reason why we live in such a dangerous world today."
World leaders "have it in their power to alleviate the suffering of millions" by dedicating adequate political and financial resources, Shetty said.
"The global outlook on the state of human rights is bleak, but there are solutions. World leaders must take immediate and decisive action to avert an impending global crisis," he said.
