People in Syria’s southern Houran region have long turned to clan reconciliation processes to resolve thorny disputes. The practice increased after 2011, and peaked over the past three years, with residents choosing the clans over the courts with the encouragement of regime legal representatives.
In Syria’s southern Suwayda province, suspected Jordanian airstrikes hunt drug traffickers and kill civilians. Regime-linked gangs operate with impunity and smugglers ferry drugs over the border. Local armed groups fight back. How did we get here?
Villages on the line of contact between regime and Turkish-backed opposition forces in the southern Afrin countryside live under constant threat of unpredictable shelling. The volatile security situation leaves families choosing between sending their children to school, despite the risks, or depriving them of an education in the hopes of keeping them safe.
The UN’s highest court ordered Syria to take “all measures within its power” to prevent torture and preserve evidence related to a landmark case brought by the governments of Canada and the Netherlands. Syrian survivors and advocates welcomed the move, but had hoped for more.
A landmark torture case brought against Syria by Canada and the Netherlands began at the UN’s highest court on Tuesday—with Damascus absent. While it is not a criminal case, torture survivors and family members of Syria’s disappeared say it marks another milestone in their long, slow fight for accountability.
Damascus continues to outwardly ignore Suwayda’s uprising—the longest, most organized and widespread protests in the southern province’s recent history—while demonstrators believe their movement can hold strong.
Once a traditional hobby practiced by a few hunters, falcon trapping is now a booming business in Syria. After 12 years of war and economic crisis, the trade is more popular than ever, and hunters are willing to take growing risks to catch the birds.
When Turkish-backed opposition forces took control of most of Afrin in 2018, villages on its outskirts became a line of contact with regime forces. There, residents face repeated shelling and cannot access their farmland, once their main livelihood.
From the landmark Koblenz trial in Germany to the latest indictment of three high-ranking Syrian regime officials in France, the battle to hold perpetrators accountable for wartime atrocities in Syria is being waged in foreign courts. What kinds of cases are being brought, and where?
Former residents of the Palestinian Yarmouk camp in Damascus face a “legal battle” with the Syrian regime regarding decisions on rubble removal, heightening fears they could lose their property.
