Syria is marking its first Worldwide Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances because the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad, because the nation grapples with lingering questions over the destiny of the numerous hundreds who disappeared throughout the nation’s civil conflict.
In a report launched on Saturday to coincide with the annual commemoration, the Syrian Community for Human Rights (SNHR) mentioned this 12 months holds “specific significance” because it obtained a serious improve within the variety of circumstances since al-Assad was toppled in December.
Desperate families flocked to former detention centres, prisons, morgues, and mass grave websites to attempt to discover their lacking family after al-Assad’s removing, and investigators gained unprecedented entry to authorities paperwork, witness accounts and human stays.
“A restricted variety of detainees have been launched alive, whereas the destiny of tens of hundreds remained unknown, rendering them forcibly disappeared,” SNHR mentioned on Saturday. “This revealed a serious tragedy that affected Syrian society as a complete.”
The rights group mentioned in its report that at the very least 177,057 individuals, together with 4,536 youngsters and eight,984 ladies, have been forcibly disappeared in Syria between March 2011 and August 2025.
It estimated that the previous authorities was answerable for greater than 90 p.c of these circumstances.
“Al-Assad’s regime has systematically adopted a coverage of enforced disappearance to terrorize and collectively punish society, focusing on dissidents and civilians from varied areas and affiliations,” SNHR mentioned.
This 12 months’s Worldwide Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances comes simply months after a new Syrian government was established beneath the management of interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Al-Sharaa has pledged to handle the enforced disappearances, issuing a presidential decree in Could that established a Nationwide Fee for Transitional Justice and a Nationwide Fee for Lacking Individuals (NCMP).
The our bodies are tasked with investigating questions of accountability, reparations and nationwide reconciliation, amongst different points. Al-Sharaa has additionally pledged to punish these answerable for mass killings and different violations.
On Saturday, Syria’s Ministry of International Affairs mentioned enforced disappearances would stay a “nationwide precedence” for the nation. “It may well solely be resolved by offering justice to the victims, revealing the reality, and restoring dignity to their households,” the ministry mentioned.
The top of the NCMP, Mohammad Reda Jalkhi, additionally mentioned that whereas “Syria faces a frightening process … [the] households of the lacking have the appropriate to full and efficient investigations”.
Independence and sources
Rights advocates have welcomed the Syrian authorities’s early steps on enforced disappearances, together with the institution of the NCMP. However they stress that the fee should be unbiased and get all of the sources it must be efficient.
“Fact, justice and reparations for Syria’s disappeared should be handled as an pressing state precedence,” Kristine Beckerle, deputy regional director for the Center East and North Africa at Amnesty Worldwide, mentioned in a statement this week.
The NCMP will need to have “enough sources and the best ranges of cooperation throughout all state establishments”, Beckerle mentioned. “With every day that passes, the torment of households ready for solutions concerning the destiny and whereabouts of their family members grows.”
The Syrian Community for Human Rights additionally mentioned the brand new commissions’ effectiveness “is determined by their precise independence and full entry to data and paperwork”.
“The authorized frameworks regulating their work should be formulated to make sure the illustration of victims and civil society, and to consolidate the comprehensiveness of justice, from truth-telling to accountability, reparations, and prevention of recurrence,” the group mentioned.
On Saturday, the Worldwide Committee of the Crimson Cross (ICRC) mentioned the disappearance of a member of the family was “not only a private tragedy, however one of many deepest and most extended human wounds of the Syrian battle”.
“The households of the lacking deserve unwavering assist and compassion to assist them seek for solutions concerning the destiny of their family members and put an finish to their struggling,” Stephane Sakalian, head of the ICRC delegation in Syria, mentioned in a press release.
“Their proper to know is a basic humanitarian precept.”
In the meantime, Syria’s state-run information company SANA reported that an interactive web site titled “Syria’s Jail Museum” was launched on Saturday to gather witness accounts of these detained in al-Assad’s detention centres, together with the infamous Sednaya prison.
The platform, put collectively by journalists and activists, goals to be each a memorial and forensic archive to facilitate the push for accountability.
The United Nations estimates that al-Assad’s authorities ran more than 100 detention facilities and an unknown variety of secret websites.
Below al-Assad, Syrian state officers used a number of strategies to punish actual and perceived opponents, together with whipping, sleep deprivation and electrocution.
