AND so it begins, the hand wringing, the contrition and the buck-passing. The wretched civilian survivors of Aleppo’s siege have not even been fully evacuated and already those who stood by and watched the horrors unfold are slithering into their respective bomb-proof diplomatic bunkers.

It’s almost as nauseating as the stench from the corpses of those innocents that lie entombed in Aleppo’s canyons of rubble. Listening to the endless acts of diplomatic self-flagellation over Aleppo these last few days made my stomach turn, not least because it was presented in most instances as if this humanitarian catastrophe was something that happened out of the blue.

Here was something that caught the world off guard, was the deceitful refrain, even if for four long bloody and barbaric years the international community stood by and watched as more than one million people went through hell. There’s no point in saying “if only”. The simple fact is that, to its eternal shame, the UN failed the people of Aleppo.

They are not the first and doubtless won’t be the last to be manipulated, abandoned and thrown to the wolves in the name of international politics and big business. Over the years there have been many Aleppos, large and small. Each in its own way has revealed the impotency of the international community and its failure to do anything to stop rampant abuses and violations of international law.

From the former Yugoslavia to the Democratic Republic of Congo and, more recently, Yemen, there is overwhelming evidence of what happens when those in positions of power turn a blind eye to human suffering for political and corporate ends. For those of us who journey to such places and encounter civilians caught up in such real-time nightmares, it’s impossible to see them simply as statistics, numbers in a tally of refugees and the displaced, wounded or dead.

So many times I’ve found myself wondering what a difference it might make if more of our political leaders and indeed everyday folk were, just for a moment, to experience first hand what people in the likes of Aleppo live through. Even today, years after the war in the former Yugoslavia, I still recall the faces of those terrified and helpless civilians I met during and after sieges in places like Vukovar, Mostar, Srebrenica and Sarajevo.

These were people like 75-year-old Safeta Kovasevic in Sarajevo, who told me of how the constant bombardment of the city during its siege proved too much for her husband who collapsed from a stroke, dying in her arms. Shortly afterwards, her daughter and two sons fell to snipers’ bullets. Two years ago in Bosnia Herzegovina, I listened as another mother, Kada Hotic, a Bosnian Muslim, recounted her horrific memories of those dark days in July 1995 when her husband Sejad and son Samir were among the 8,000 men and boys rounded up and killed at Srebrenica, the worst atrocity on European soil since the Second World War.

“I know that Samir, along with other boys, was tied and probably kept waiting a long time to be killed,” said Kada, as we stood in the huge Potocari Memorial cemetery among the rows of white headstones, four of which belong to the men of her family. More recently, in the backstreet slums of the Turkish port city of Izmir, a 25-year-old mother called Zaina from Aleppo, told me of how she had fled the city and struggled to care for her children in a hovel infested with mice and cockroaches.

Even more recently outside the besieged Iraqi city of Mosul, the plight of which many see as having parallels with Aleppo, it was grandmother Nabila who talked of how she and her grandson Ahmed could no longer live in fear and made the dangerous trek from their neighbourhood, afraid they might be held by Islamic State (IS) fighters as human shields as Iraqi and Kurdish forces sought to retake Mosul.

For these women and children, life and death became a lottery because of international political cynicism and “expediency” that prevented anyone from coming to their rescue. Yes, I know such things are easier said than done but we have been here so many times before that some lessons might have been learned. What is clear is that the UN is not fit for purpose and needs to be overhauled.

For years the UN Security Council has been held hostage by one or other of its members. Most recently it has been Russia, which has repeatedly used its veto to shield the Syrian government. As Diana Semaan of Amnesty International has pointed out, Moscow has vetoed five resolutions that sought to end some of the horrific abuses in Syria and to bring to justice those responsible by referring the situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The two UN Security Council resolutions, 2139 and 2165, that eventually were approved demanded unfettered access for humanitarian relief, the lifting of sieges on Aleppo and an end to attacks on civilians, torture and enforced disappearances. They have been flouted on a daily basis with no consequences for the perpetrators.

All of this is unlikely to stop soon. Let’s not forget that, while all eyes have been focussed on Aleppo, some 1.3 million people are besieged in Syria, according to a recent report by Siege Watch, a monitor run by joint American and Netherlands-based research teams. In all, at least 39 communities remain under siege either by government forces and their allies or by rebel groups, including the town of Madaya which last year drew the world’s attention, albeit briefly, when harrowing photographs emerged of its malnourished citizens.

As Siege Watch points out, “the deliberate starvation of civilians is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and therefore a war crime”. There have always been crimes of war but the vigour with which they are being perpetrated is matched only by the international community’s apparent indifference.

At every political level, without fear or favour, there must be intensified efforts to hold accountable all of those who commit such atrocities. In Syria among measures needed are sanctions targetting officials who have ordered unlawful attacks, a comprehensive arms embargo to stop the flow of weapons and a means of bringing perpetrators of war crimes to justice.

This should not be confined to Syria. The time has come for other questions to be asked of the UK Government’s role in helping perpetrate the Saudi-led war in Yemen with its £3.3 billion worth of arms sales to the Saudi kingdom. As SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson’s speech at PMQs highlighted on Wednesday, Britain is prioritising alliances over life and valuing arms sales over an ethical foreign policy.

It’s time to stop passing the buck over the likes of Aleppo and start challenging the cynical geopolitics that lie behind such crises.