The United Nations says it has run out of words on Syria, but we, the undersigned, still have some for the governments, parliamentarians, electorates, and opinion leaders of the powers upon whom the international legal order has hitherto depended.

The world is a bystander to the carnage that has ravaged the lives of Syrians. All has happened in full view of a global audience that sees everything but refuses to act.

Through Russian obstruction and western irresolution, the UN Security Council has failed to protect Syrians. To the extent that it has been able to pass resolutions, they have proved ineffectual. All they have done is provide a fig leaf to an institution that appears moribund. Perhaps conscious of the stain this might leave on its legacy, the UN has even stopped counting Syria’s dead. After seven years, these nations appear united only in their apathy.

It will be redundant to list the nature and magnitude of all the crimes that the Assad regime has committed against Syrians, aided by local and foreign militias, by Iranian strategic and financial aid, by Russian airpower and mercenaries—and by international indifference. The world that watched and averted its eyes is its passive enabler.

Syrians were shot and killed in broad daylight for protesting injustice. They were imprisoned, tortured, and executed. They were bombed and shelled. They were besieged, raped, and humiliated. They were gassed. They were displaced and dispossessed.

Those with the power to act have been generous with expressions of sympathy but have offered nothing beyond the wish that this war on civilians—which they grotesquely call a “civil war”—would end. They call on “all parties” to show restraint, even though one side alone has a virtual monopoly on violence; they encourage all parties to negotiate, even though the opposition is entirely without leverage. They say there is “no military solution” though the regime has given no indication that it believes in a solution of any other kind. Meanwhile, pleas from aid agencies and endangered Syrians fall on deaf ears.

Refugees—the only Syrians to have received some assistance—have seen their plight depoliticized, isolated from the terror that forced them to flee.

Today, as Idlib and Afrin burn, the inevitable is unfolding in Ghouta, the huge open-air concentration camp about to enter its fifth year under siege. What happens next is predictable because the same formula has been applied repeatedly over the past seven years. After holding a civilian population hostage, blocking food, medicine, and aid of any kind, the regime bombs the area relentlessly, in particular its medical facilities, until it capitulates. Those who survive are then forced from their homes that are then expropriated for demographic engineering with the aim of creating politically homogeneous geographies.

While there are no longer any illusions about the role of the Security Council, every member state has nevertheless adopted and pledged to uphold the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine under the UN’s Office on Genocide Prevention. The destruction of Syria was preventable, and can now only be ended by the elected and appointed members of democratic bodies if they fulfill their obligations under R2P to protect Syria’s endangered population from war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and what UN war crimes investigators have themselves labeled the “crime of extermination.”

For the agony of the people of Syria to come to an end, this must be forcibly stopped. The perpetrators of these colossal crimes against humanity must be halted, once and for all. There are myriad geopolitical reasons why this is an imperative, but none as immediate and important as the sanctity of life and the exercise of free will. Inaction would reduce these principles to the status of platitudes devoid of all meaning. To their misfortune, Syrians dared to believe in these principles; they dared to believe that while their struggle for dignity was theirs alone, they wouldn’t be abandoned to such a fate in the twenty-first century.

Today, appealing once more to the ethics and the codes of moral conduct on which democracy and international law are built, we ask you to act now to stop the Syrian genocide: demand an immediate ceasefire, an immediate lifting of all sieges, immediate access for relief aid agencies, release of political detainees, and immediate protection for all Syrian lives.

Affiliations, where given, are for the purpose of identification only:

Yassin al-Haj Saleh, writer, Berlin

Robin Yassin-Kassab, writer, Scotland

Rime Allaf, writer and researcher

Mohammad Al Attar, Syrian playwright, Berlin

Michel Kilo, Syrian writer and politician, Paris

Moncef Marzouki, former president of Tunisia

Burhan Ghalioun, Syrian scholar and politician, Paris

Karam Nachar, Syrian writer and academic, Istanbul

Mohammad Ali Atassi, journalist and filmmaker, Beirut

Ossama Mohammed, filmmaker, Paris

Yasmin Fedda, filmmaker, UK

Fadel Abdul Ghany, chairperson of the Syrian Network for Human Rights

Nisrin Al-Zahre, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris

Nadia Aissaoui, sociologist, Paris

Leila Nachawati Rego, writer, Spain

Yasser Munif, Emerson College

Mohammed Hanif, writer and journalist

Mutaz Al-Khatib, writer, Syria

Hala Mohammad, Syrian poet, Paris

Samih Choukaer, Syrian musician, Paris

Abdul Wahab Badrakhan, journalist, UK

Ammar Abdulhamid, Syrian-American author and activist

Fares Helou, Syrian actor, Paris

Assem Al Basha, Syrian sculptor, Spain

Ibrahim Al-Jabeen, Al-Arab, Germany

Marie-Thérèse Kiriaky, Social Activist

Professor, Martti Koskenniemi, University of Helsinki

Professor Gilbert Achcar, SOAS

Professor Nader Hashemi, University of Denver

Professor François Burgat, L’Institut de Recherches et d’Études sur les Mondes Arabes et Musulmans (IREMAM)

Professor Fawaz A. Gerges, London School of Economics

Professor Joseph Bahout, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Professor Michael Nagler, UC Berkeley

Professor Wendy Pearlman, Northwestern University

Professor Steven Heydemann, Smith College

Professor Joseph E. Schwartzberg, University of Minnesota

Professor Murhaf Jouejati, National Defense University

Professor Lars Chittka, Queen Mary University, London

Professor Amr Al-Azm, Shawnee State University

Professor Ghassan Hage, Melbourne University

Professor Ahmad Barqawi, Palestinian-Syrian

Professor Jamie Mayerfeld, University of Washington

Professor Stephen Zunes, University of San Francisco

Professor Anna Kathrin Bleuler, University of Salzburg

Professor Carola Lentz, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

Professor Love Ekenberg, UNESCO Chair, Stockholm University, Sweden

Professor Annie Sparrow, Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai

Professor James Simpson, Harvard University

Professor Ziad Majed, political scientist, Paris

Haid Haid, Syrian researcher, Chatham House, London

Yassin Swehat, Syrian journalist, Istanbul

Loubna Mrie, Syrian journalist, New York

Rafat Alzakout, theater director and documentary filmmaker, Berlin

Khaldoun Al-Nabwani, writer and scholar, Paris

Ghayath Almadhoun, poet, Palestine, Syria, and Sweden

Subhi Hadidi, writer, Syria and France

Stephen R. Shalom, New Politics

Barry Finger, New Politics

Jason Schulman, New Politics

Omar Kaddour, writer, France

Najati Tayara, writer, Syria and Paris

Marcelle Shehwaro, Syrian activist, Istanbul

Kenan Rahmani, Syrian campaigner

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, University of Stirling

Lydia Wilson, University of Oxford

Thomas Pierret, researcher, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France

Kelly Grotke, writer and academic, visiting scholar at Cornell University

Danny Postel, Northwestern University

Stephen Hastings-King, writer and researcher, Massachusetts

Anna Nolan, human rights campaigner

Rafif Jouejati, Foundation to Restore Equality and Education in Syria

Mohja Kahf, Syrian-American poet and scholar, US

Rami Jarrah, journalist, Turkey

Shiyam Galyon, Books Not Bombs

Afra Jalabi, Syrian writer, Canada

Miream Salameh, Syrian refugee and visual artist, Melbourne

Şenay Özden, researcher, Istanbul

Faraj Bayrakdar, poet, Stockholm

Hanna Himo, Syrian poet, Stockholm

Theo Horesh, author and journalist, Colorado

Christin Lüttich, political scientist, Berlin

Sarah Hunaidi, writer, Chicago

Véronique Nahoum-Grappe, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France

Husam Alkatlaby, human rights activist, The Netherlands

Maen al-Bayari‏, journalist, Jordan

Michael Karadjis, Western Sydney University

Stefan Tarnowski, translator

Mutasem Syoufi, The Day After

Najib Ghadbian, scholar and activist

Ammar Abd Rabbo, journalist

Laila Alodaat, lawyer, UK

Fares Albahra, Syrian poet and psychiatrist, Berlin

Paweł Machcewicz, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw

Oz Katerji, journalist

Charles Davis, writer, Los Angeles

Pastor David Tatgenhorst, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Necati Sönmez, filmmaker, Turkey

Kris Manjapra, fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin; associate professor, Tufts University

Zeynep Kivilcim, Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin

Housamedden Darwish, assistant professor, University of Cologne

Vladimir Tarnopolsky, musician, Russia

A full list of the more than 200 signatories can be found here.