Since 15 December, intermittent evacuations of civilians and opposition fighters from Eastern Aleppo have taken place, resulting in an estimated 25,000 people leaving the eastern part of the city. A reciprocal evacuation of Shia civilians from the towns of Foah and Kefraya, besieged by armed opposition groups, is also underway. On 19 December the UN Security Council voted unanimously to request the UN carry out neutral monitoring and observation of the evacuations. The following day the UN reported that it had received authorization to send 20 monitors to Eastern Aleppo.
After five years of Security Council failure to halt atrocities in Syria, on 21 December the General Assembly passed a resolution to establish an independent international mechanism to collect evidence of atrocities in Syria, in order to facilitate future prosecutions of perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity.