UNHRC warns fighting parties in Libya for 'criminal liability'

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Ibn Al-Hussein warned all parties involved in the fighting in Libya for "criminally liability" if they continue to abuse international human rights and humanitarian laws.
"As a commander of an armed group, you are criminally liable under international law if you commit or order the commission of grave human rights abuses or fail to take reasonable and necessary measures to prevent or punish their commission," High Commissioner Ibn Al-Hussein warned in a press release from his office in Geneva on Tuesday.
"I urge all those in positions of authority to declare publicly that acts amounting to violations and abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law will not be tolerated." Furthermore, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Libya Bernardino Leon urged all sides of the conflict to immediately cease armed hostilities.
"All those suffering in this violence deserve to live in safety with their rights fully protected", Leon said in the same press release. "I appeal to all Libyan political and military leaders to engage, as a matter of urgency, in a genuine political dialogue to take Libya out of the current crisis." A new United Nations human rights report released today stated that fighting between armed groups in western and eastern Libya, as well as in the south, has increased in recent month. It has left hundreds of civilian dead, displaced hundrededs others and inflected acute humanitarian conditions on those trapped in conflict zones.
The report published jointly by the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) and the United Nations Human Rights Office, documented indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas, abduction of civilians, torture and reports of executions, as well as deliberate destruction of property, among other serious abuses and violations of international law in various parts of the country.
Political and human rights activists, media professionals and other public figures have been targeted by armed groups, with many having been abducted, threatened or had their homes looted or burned.