New round of talks to draft a new Syrian constitution opens in Geneva

The fifth round of the so-called Constitutional Committee begins in the Swiss city of Geneva, after four rounds with little progress. The last round took place between 30 November and 4 December and was as fruitless as the previous rounds.  

The head of the government delegation, Ahmad al-Kizbari, has indicated that the humanitarian situation will be one of the issues on the table, according to the Syrian news agency SANA. 

For his part, the head of the opposition delegation has called for a clear timetable for the talks to yield positive results in several months, given the lack of visible progress recently criticised by the UN special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen.  

The UN envoy called for results "in the shortest possible time" and warned that "it cannot be longer than several months under any circumstances" because of the urgency of "ending the human tragedy". 

Pedersen has proposed holding three-week sessions until an agreement is reached and took the opportunity to recall that the UN supported a political process of constitutional reform with a clearly defined timetable back in 2015. 

The Constitutional Committee is composed of 150 members and met for the first time at the end of October 2019. Its ultimate goal is to carry out a political reform of the country and the holding of free elections under UN supervision. It has representation from the government, the opposition and civil society, including Kurds, but none from the People's Protection Units (YPG). Committee members will have to draft a new constitution or revise the 2012 constitution. On this occasion, 45 of the 150 members will be in Geneva.  

If the draft constitution goes through, it will have to be approved by the parliament elected in July 2020, controlled by the alliance led by President al-Assad's Ba'ath Party. 

According to Syrian electoral law, Syria's next presidential election is scheduled to take place between 16 April and 16 May this year, 90 days before the expiry of the seven-year term of Assad, who has been in power since 2000.  

The US and several European countries have accused the Syrian president of deliberately delaying the drafting of a new constitution or the reform of the existing one in order to lose time until presidential elections are held this year and thus avoid the supervised vote called for by the UN Security Council.  

Nearly a decade of conflict has ravaged Syria, leaving more than half a million people dead, including more than 22,000 children, and displacing more than half of the country's 23 million people, including 5 million refugees, most of them in neighbouring countries. 

The civil war began in 2011 in the context of massive demonstrations in several Arab countries, in what was called the Arab Spring, calling for democratising reforms. In Syria, the demonstrations eventually escalated into an armed conflict in which government forces clashed with opposition and jihadist groups, leaving the country in chaos.  

Soon several regional and international powers entered directly or indirectly into the conflict, including Russia, the United States, Iran, Turkey and Israel, among others, supporting one side or the other to defend their interests in the region.  

If the constitutional project finally goes ahead, the country will be able to glimpse the beginning of political and social pacification of the country, and thus begin to rebuild a country that has been razed to the ground.