Syria
Approximately 17,000 persons are missing from the regime of Hafez al Assad, which includes cases that are still highly politically relevant for neighboring states, and at least 130,000 persons are missing from the present conflict, including not only Syrians but people from 60 or more countries. There are also Syrians missing as a result of migration.
Since the conflict began in March 2011, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed; more than 6.5 million have been displaced inside the country, and a further 5.6 million have fled the country, seeking safety in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, and in Europe. Surviving families of the missing in a number of circumstances do not know if the person is missing inside or outside Syria and in some cases a number of relatives may have gone missing in different locations.
Creating a strategy to locate and identify the missing and secure the rights of surviving families to truth, justice, and reparations requires a shared understanding of the process by civil society, families of the missing and international organizations, as well as the cooperation of multiple states that are hosting Syrian refugees. Over the long term, it will also require the cooperation of the Syrian authorities.
A sustainable strategy will necessitate the continued development of a secure, central, impartial database that can store and process data from multiple sources, including families of the missing residing inside and outside Syria, on the location of mass graves and other clandestine missing persons sites, and data related to the person reported to be missing, as well as witness information concerning possible perpetrators.
Accounting for missing persons through a rule-of-law-based process will have a bearing on the credibility of future actions to redress the loss of economic and social rights and to secure potential reparations for victims of disappearance.
Syrian families of the missing and CSOs have developed policies within the general ICMP policy framework. Through meetings facilitated by ICMP, the families have achieved consensus on measures to establish circumstances of disappearance, clarify the fate of victims, and secure accountability, justice, and compensation on the basis of human rights and the rule of law.
ICMP’s Syria Program has worked to achieve these objectives since its launch in 2016, focusing on laying the foundations of a process to account for missing persons regardless of ethnic or religious background or role in the conflict.
The program works on empowering and capacity-building for families of the missing, CSOs and others to participate in the process of accounting for the missing; developing a knowledge base on the rights of victims and survivors; strengthening the capacity of families of the missing, Syrian civilians, CSOs, and legal experts to address the issue of missing persons; providing stakeholders with technical and legal knowledge about relevant international standards, including those related to the protection of data; developing a participatory process for data collection among families of missing persons based on ICMP’s expertise in collecting data from more than 100,000 families around the world; contributing to a future strategy for the accountability of the missing in Syria; helping families of the missing to create a common platform regardless of sectarian or national affiliation or role of the missing in the conflict; contributing to the restoration of the rule of law and the credibility of transitional justice in relation to missing persons cases; and increasing confidence among families of the missing, which contributes to the creation of an environment in which people can return to their homes.
ICMP’s Online Inquiry Center (OIC), the access point to its Integrated Data Management System (iDMS), is available in Arabic and fully accessible to the families of missing persons from Syria.
A roundtable meeting organized by ICMP in 2019 that included representatives of associations of families of the missing and CSOs working on the missing persons issue recommended the formation of a core representative group of Syrian stakeholders and international experts. The Policy Coordination Group (PCG) was launched following a conference organized by ICMP in The Hague in February 2020. It comprises Syrian family associations, civil society organizations, jurists and human rights defenders, as well as international advisors. It aims to develop broad recommendations and a policy framework for a future Syrian missing persons process, including purpose-specific legislation and institutions. The PCG has adopted several documents related to Syria’s missing, including an Ethical Charter on Data Collection and Documentation, a UPR submission to the UN Human Rights Council, a paper on Ethical Charter, a paper on missing persons legislation, and a paper on addressing the issue of mass graves in Syria.
