Syria presented an important case study for the current challenges that TJ faces, and the requirement for multi-level and multi-stakeholder engagement. It also gave rise to a number of potential initiatives to strengthen TJ, potentially with support from international partners.
The fall of the dictatorial and repressive Assad regime in 2024 came as a surprise, not only to the international community, but to Syrians as well. Syrians began to demand Transitional Justice ‘from day one’, leading to the creation of national Transitional Justice and Missing Persons Commissions, and programmes focusing on reparations and victim protections. The National Commission for Transitional Justice (NCTJ) is a Syrian- and survivor-led organisation, with a majority of the Commissioners also victims of the regime. The group heard how it has six priority areas: truth-seeking, justice and accountability, reparations, memorialisation, guarantees of non-recurrence, and reconciliation. This last priority of reconciliation has proved the most controversial, because many people do not want to just reconcile and forgive. NCTJ makes use of extensive documentation work conducted prior to the fall of the regime, and provides a space for civil society for different regions of Syria to speak out.
During a Syria-focused breakout session, participants raised three critical areas for TJ approaches in Syria to address: evidence, jurisdiction, and resources.
First, participants argued that it was difficult to organise the necessary evidence to hold perpetrators accountable. Much evidence is still inadmissible due to international concerns over Syria’s use of the death penalty and the lack of international crimes in Syrian law. Meanwhile, on-the-ground efforts to gain other sources of evidence face several hurdles. Interviewing survivors again introduces the potential for re-traumatisation, which was likened to ‘rape for a second time’. In addition, physical evidence is hard to find due to the former regime’s use of mass graves. There are an estimated 600-800 mass graves in Syria, and these graves include victims from other countries, such as Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq. Bodies are also often burned, making retrieval and identification even harder. As a result of these difficulties, participants discussed how alternative sources of evidence were often admitted. For example, the Commander of the Armed Forces in Syria was controversially spared prosecution because he had provided information on other perpetrators.
Second, Syrian TJ organisations also face a jurisdiction challenge. Many senior perpetrators are outside of Syria, requiring other countries to hold perpetrators accountable. A legal expert pointed out that this is difficult in countries such as the United Kingdom, where perpetrators of crimes in conflicts, like in Syria, cannot be tried if visiting the country for tourism or other short-term purposes. This is unlike countries such as Germany and Sweden where Universal Jurisdiction proceedings have been used to hold members of the Assad regime accountable for their crimes. Meanwhile, MENA experts raised issues with Syria’s own ability to hold perpetrators accountable; Syria currently lacks the jurisdiction or institutional means to bring perpetrators back from other countries. In addition, perpetrators from multiple nations committed crimes in Syria during the war, leading to questions over how to offer reparations to victims of these external actors, such as amputees resulting from Russian and Counter-Daesh Coalition bombings.
Third, event participants emphasised how a dearth of resources posed a critical challenge to Syria’s quest for TJ. Many areas of Syria are entirely destroyed. The NCTJ, for example, has at times struggled to find a building to host its regional offices because of the mass destruction of infrastructure. The collapsed economy and lack of access to basic necessities in areas complicates justice objectives, as the priority is still daily survival. This local resource difficulty is coupled with international funding often misaligning with the justice demands of Syrian communities. As TJ timelines stretch out into the future, many Syrians feel that TJ has already failed, and frequently criticise the work of the NCTJ for having not already brought about justice. In response to the above challenges, participants proposed a selection of initiatives that could be actioned in the next 12-24 months. These included international support for multi-stakeholder engagement, including via a localised communications strategy, a tailored funding approach, and a comprehensive registration system for missing persons (see table below):
| Strategies for Multi-Stakeholder Engagement in Syria | |
| (I) Develop a localised communication strategy | (a) Acknowledging that official government communications are not perfect, a local communication strategy would provide the public with an understanding of what is happening with TJ in Syria, the rationale behind decisions, and the limitations of current efforts, in order to manage expectations; this strategy should include faith leaders and make use of social media (b) The strategy would define key messages and tailor content for each local context, following surveys of local stakeholders and grassroots initiatives. These surveys would help to understand both local needs and potential challenges to communications (such as prior bias); this would help foster trust between the NCTJ and Syrian communities (c) It should utilise creative methods of delivering information, such as televised drama series and theatre performances that could be delivered in local community spaces. |
| (II) Missing Persons Registry | (a) Develop a public campaign for the registration of missing persons with the National Commission for Missing Persons (NCMP). This would disseminate knowledge of the registry currently being developed, and support local understanding of its relation to truth-seeking and TJ, drawing on the lessons from transitional contexts such as Guatemala and Argentina (b) Create a plan to improve accessibility to the registry for less-digitally-literate communities (c) Enable operations in a limited-funding environment, via the training of local staff, who could facilitate the campaign with sensitivity, and gather evidence of the registry’s impact to seek funding from donors (d) Support articles about the legal status of laws related to missing persons (e) Push for data-sharing and compatibility between various registries (including those held by the Syrian government and those by the UN) and compile all datasets into one database on missing persons (f) Inculcate institutional partnerships with other post-conflict contexts that pioneer forensic DNA genealogy for missing persons. |
| (III) Tailored Funding Approach | (a) Identify key organisations providing project-specific funding; for example, arts funding for art therapy programmes for children (b) Identify private entities, including private firms and members of the diaspora, who can assist with small donations (c) Create a collective fund via small donations that can be strategically invested to finance itself (d) Bring visibility to projects to demonstrate impact and to engage donors, via traditional and social media platforms. Where possible, funding for communications initiatives needs support (e) Find creative means to operate in limited-funding environments. |