UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has urged Syria’s new government to initiate a comprehensive national reconciliation process to address decades of human rights violations. Speaking in Damascus on Wednesday during the first visit by a UN rights chief to Syria,

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk called on Wednesday for a Syrian national reconciliation process to ensure justice for crimes committed over the past five decades of iron-fisted rule by the Assad family.

United Nations rights chief Volker Turk on Wednesday said transitional justice was "crucial" for Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, during the first-ever visit by someone in his post to the country.