'It's an everyday trauma': Renewed hope in the quest to uncover the fate of Syria's disappeared

The resolution to establish an Independent Institution on Missing Persons in Syria, adopted by the UN General Assembly at the end of June, marks a first, promising step to uncover the fate of over 130,000 people who have disappeared since the Syrian conflict began in 2011.

Most of them are believed to be detained or disappeared by the regime of Bashar al-Assad; according to human rights organisations, this is estimated to be about 85% of those unaccounted for. Others were kidnapped by opposition groups and extremist groups like the Islamic State (IS).

The new international institution, which is to be set up within three months and then quickly put into operation, will collect information from families, Syrian civil society organisations, whistle blowers, UN agencies and through inquiries to both the Syrian government and authorities in opposition-held areas.

For years, victims, survivors, relatives and rights activists have been calling for the international community to act while pursuing their hard-fought struggle for truth and justice.

"For more than a decade, family members have been persistently seeking information for their missing loved ones in the face of enormous challenges"

“It’s an important step because it centres the voices and leadership of the families of detainees and the survivors,” Wafa Ali Mustafa, a Syrian activist and daughter of Ali Mustafa who was forcibly disappeared by the Assad regime in 2013, said to The New Arab.

“It’s just disappointing that it took twelve years to happen.”

The recent historic vote for the establishment of an independent investigative body for Syria’s disappeared would have been impossible without the tireless work by grassroots Syrian family and victim-led organisations.

For more than a decade, family members have been persistently seeking information for their missing loved ones in the face of enormous challenges, with all parties to the conflict showing to be unwilling to address the issue.

“We were frustrated with the international community and their empty statements without actions. We wanted to provide solutions,” Ahmad Helmi, a Syrian activist and co-founder of Ta'afi, a survivor-led initiative that supports victims of detention, torture, and enforced disappearance, said to TNA.

He himself is a survivor of three years of forcible disappearance and torture in various detention facilities of the Syrian regime.

In February 2021, five organisations of victims and their families launched the Truth and Justice Charter which presents their common vision on how to advance the cause of justice and truth in Syria, adopting a victim-centred approach.

It demands the immediate release of all unjustly detained people, clarification on the fate of the missing ones, and the return of the remains of those killed to their families. A core priority is the centrality of the survivors and families, who have the right to know the truth about their loved ones.

The victim groups commissioned a study published in May 2021 on effective mechanisms to address the issue of people who have been arbitrarily detained and forcibly disappeared in Syria. 

It called for the establishment of an international body, which has been used to lobby international organisations and UN Member States to take action.

In December 2021, the increasing calls to address the tragedy of missing persons culminated in General Assembly resolution 76/228, which requested that the UN Secretary General conduct a study on how to bolster efforts to clarify the fate and whereabouts of missing people in Syria.

This resulted in a report released in August 2022 recommending the creation of an independent international entity.

"The UN investigative entity will have an extensive body of work to cover, given the many thousands of people vanished in Syria’s 12 years of conflict. The real number is likely to be much higher as parties to the conflict have never disclosed who is in their custody"

The recent adoption of the resolution is the first-ever initiative to be fully conceived and developed by Syrian survivors and family members of missing people.

Syrian victims and relatives should be represented and involved in the independent body, from its establishment to the decision-making.

“We will be right behind it, lobbying around the clock,” said Helmi, pledging to push for a victim-centred focus in all stages of the process. “We don’t have the luxury to stop, we will keep fighting”.

The UN investigative entity will have an extensive body of work to cover, given the many thousands of people vanished in Syria’s 12 years of conflict. The real number is likely to be much higher as parties to the conflict have never disclosed who is in their custody.

In the majority of cases, families are denied information about whether their detained family member has died or the cause of death. Moreover, many of the families have fled and are now scattered all over the world, making for a lengthy and complex task to find details related to the missing Syrians.

“It will be a very long-term process to obtain information for all the cases, the conflict is ongoing, so many families have been separated by the war and are not in Syria,” Noura Ghazi, a Syrian human rights lawyer and CEO of Nophotozone, which promotes legal and human rights awareness on issues of enforced disappearance and detention, told TNA.

“We don’t expect to achieve what we want in our lifetime, but it’s good to kick-start the process for the next generation,” she continued.

Ghazi emphasised that enforced disappearances in Syria date back decades. Her own father was imprisoned 9 times by the former Syrian president and father of the current leader Hafez al-Assad.

In 2015, she lost contact with her husband Bassel Khartabil Safadi, a well-known rights defender. Two years later she received confirmation that he had been executed by the Syrian regime. She has been trying to retrieve his body for years now.

“I’ve been suffering since I was a child. For years, I was forgetting the face and voice of my father. This was repeated with my husband,” Ghazi Said. “It’s an everyday trauma.”

For Helmi, the new mechanism may offer a “window of opportunity” given its humanitarian mandate. It will provide a one single source of information to register cases and consolidate existing data, ultimately providing some answers about the fate of their family members.

He noted that, even with limited or no initial cooperation from Damascus, such an institution can act as a central body gathering details, photo and video content to help discover the fate of missing relatives.

"In the face of an over a decade-long devastating war, the UN investigative body represents a glimmer of hope for the countless Syrian families who are still suffering the pain of not knowing"

The so-called Caesar photos, more than 53,000 images smuggled out of Syria by a regime defector in late 2013, enabled some families to identify missing loved ones amongst the dead bodies of scores of detainees in Syrian prison facilities.

Caesar Families Association (CFA), founded by a group of relatives of those identified in the defector’s files, developed a facial recognition software that facilitates the task of searching through photos and videos for those left behind.

“There’s a lot of work the UN entity can do already even without access to Syria,” Helmi pointed out, “and we will pressure the Syrian regime to collaborate with the new institution.”

Ghazi is not optimistic, knowing well that the Assad regime will do all in its power not to cooperate with the  international investigation. Still, she holds some hope seeing an achievement for the first time in her nearly 20 years of struggle for truth.

Mustafa, who’s been long campaigning for the release of Syrian detainees, emphasised the need to also focus on urgent action to save those detainees who may still be alive.

“This new institution should not be a replacement for a comprehensive solution for the crimes of detention and enforced disappearance,” the activist asserted.

In the face of an over a decade-long devastating war, the UN investigative body represents a glimmer of hope for the countless Syrian families who are still suffering the pain of not knowing. 

It is a major step towards accountability for the crime of the Syrian regime, at a time when governments across the MENA region have rehabilitated and welcomed Damascus back to the international stage.

Alessandra Bajec is a freelance journalist currently based in Tunis.

Follow her on Twitter: @AlessandraBajec