On 26 February 2018, the UN demanded a resolution for a 30-day ceasefire across Syria and the allowance of humanitarian convoys for the 400,000 people besieged in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta. The following day Iran said it did not care about UN resolutions. Turkey declared that its operations in northern Syria would not be affected. Russia said a ceasefire could last for five hours not 30 days. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres pleaded for an end to wartime activities. The Syrian government and their Russian allies continued the slaughter. Humanitarian law and UN resolutions were of no consequence.

The Syrian civil war bred cruelties. The siege of Ghouta had been under way since 2013. Hundreds of thousands of people lived underground, beneath bombs, under gunfire, with little food or water and no medical supplies. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that by mid-March 2018, 1,000 people had been killed in pulverized buildings, described by UN spokespersons as a ‘hell on earth’.

Disbelief about Syria raises questions whether a worldwide malignancy of cruelties will end. If the leaders of states, if powerful people in institutions, if key members of extremist groups think that their actions should be influenced only by what they can get away with, the idea of policies governed by ethics and laws looks absurd.

Slaughter in Ghouta highlights conditions which have nurtured cruelties: indifference to human rights and non-violence, plus derision about humanitarian law and other ethical considerations. In reaction to threats of terrorism, and as the product of an economics-based encouragement of selfishness and inequality, cruelties seem bound to increase. If so, do those who influence public opinion allow the trend to continue, or would they support a counter humanitarianism?