This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Syria rights investigators back calls for earthquake ‘failures’ probe

Top rights investigators appointed by the Human Rights Council on Monday delivered a highly critical assessment of the role of the international community including the UN in getting help to Syrians hit by last month’s deadly earthquake emergency.

The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria pointed to “failures that hindered the delivery of urgent and lifesaving aid” to the largely opposition-held northwest region, in the days after the 6 February quakes.

Humanitarian assessments point to more than 7,000 people killed in Syria by the natural disaster.

Speaking in Geneva, chairperson of the inquiry, Paulo Pinheiro, backed calls for a probe into alleged delays in getting aid and rescue equipment to those affected.

The people of Syria had “a right to the truth”, the veteran rights experts insisted:

“In Syria there was a discrimination in terms of why this happen(ed)… they have the right to know what exactly happened for not receiving (help) immediately. Because three days later a lot of people could survive if there was a fast, immediate reaction of the international community and the United Nations in terms of the aid immediately after the disaster, the earthquake.”

Myanmar: Social media companies urged to stand up to junta

To Myanmar, where UN-appointed independent rights experts have urged social media companies to do more to resist the military junta’s “online campaign of terror”.

In an appeal to internet chat platforms to monitor content more carefully and allocate sufficient resources to do so, the rights experts warned that Telegram in particular had become “a hotbed of pro-military activity”.

Tens of thousands of followers had been drawn to the junta’s “violent and misogynistic content”, warned the rights experts, who noted that women were often accused of having sex with Muslim men or supporting the Muslim population.

This is a “common ultranationalist, discriminatory and Islamophobic narrative in Myanmar”, said the experts, who added that women are also targeted by so-called “doxxing” - the act of publishing private information, including names and addresses, about individuals without their consent.

Disability support under threat from workforce crisis

Efforts to provide care for people with disabilities in the community and not in institutions are under threat from the continuing workforce crisis linked to COVID-19, the Human Rights Council has heard.

In a new report, the Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities, Gerard Quinn, told the Council that the pandemic had forced care in the community providers to close programmes, that they could no longer find staff to reopen.

Workers in this sector were mainly women from minority and immigrant communities, the Special Rapporteur said, before insisting that staff shortages were likely to continue – along with disruption to the lives of persons with disabilities - without increases in compensation, training and recognition of the work provided.

In related remarks, Mr Quinn told the Human Rights Council that technology advances such as voice recognition and smart homes had helped “many” people with disabilities to realize their fundamental rights.

But the Special Rapporteur also noted that the algorithms that drive machine learning and artificial intelligence “do not routinely” work off valid data from persons with disabilities, which may make it difficult to recognize deaf speakers, for instance.

The answer to this problem is to ensure better data-gathering so that services can be personalized to those who need them, the rights expert explained.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.