Syrian president Bashar Assad's regime has used "starvation as a weapon of war", Foreign Secretary William Hague said, as he launched a report documenting human rights violations around the world.
Mr Hague said Mr Assad's forces had killed civilians mercilessly in a "desperate attempt to cling to power" and blamed a "lack of political will" at both national and international level for failure to tackle the problem.
The Foreign Secretary highlighted efforts to end sexual violence in trouble-spots around the world, and the report also raised concerns about increased levels of discrimination faced by gay people in a number of countries.
Mr Hague, along with Hollywood star and UN special envoy Angelina Jolie, is to host an international summit in London on ending sexual violence in conflict zones later this year.
On Syria, he said: "In some countries a desire for power at any cost fuelled terrible human rights abuses, while a lack of political will at the national and international level meant that not enough was done to prevent them.
"The consequences were most catastrophic in Syria. The Assad regime bears the primary responsibility for protecting its own population. But it continued last year to kill civilians mercilessly with chemical weapons, barrel bombs and artillery fire."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article