It is a scene that would have been unimaginable just a few months ago: hundreds of people gathered outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Damascus on September 22, 2025, chanting slogans and holding cardboard placards featuring photographs of men, women, and children.
All of these individuals have lost contact with a family member — their sons, daughters, parents, brothers, or sisters — who were attempting to reach Europe in search of a better future.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), at least 76,276 people have gone missing along migration routes since 2014.
After conducting their own searches, these Syrian families are now urging the transitional government to take their plight seriously and provide answers.
Most are convinced their relatives are being held against their will in prisons in Libya, and some of them lost contact after a shipwreck near the Libyan coast.
“Now that Syria is free, we want our children to come back and live here," laments Fatima Mohammad Kaer Tru, who has been desperately searching for her son, after he went missing in Libya in March 2024.
"This happiness, these celebrations are not complete, because every family has lost at least one child, whether in Sednaya, in prison, or on the road to Europe.”
The families have already organised two demonstrations since the fall of the regime — the first was on the Omayyad Square on February 25, and the second was outside the Libyan embassy in Damascus on March 25.
“During the first gathering, it was heartbreaking to see all those mothers who had lost their sons," confides Khawla el Kur, mother of Yasser Ammar Marjar, who disappeared at sea along with at least 33 other exiles on December 11, 2024, at the age of 20.
"We all share the same story… but at the same time, each of us bears our pain alone, unable to tell it.”
Strength in unity
At the origin of this collective is 34-year-old Rana Kassem Al-Khobi.
“We want our voices to reach the government, for it to stand with us and help free our relatives from Libyan prisons,” says this young woman, her green-grey eyes often full of emotion.
Her brother, Mohamed, disappeared on October 31, 2023, aged 26, after taking to the sea from Libya.
Rana first got in touch with the relatives of others who vanished on the same boat. Many, like her own family, are from Deraa. She created a WhatsApp group where families exchange every clue they can gather.
“We try to cross-check every bit of information, to see what’s real and what’s not,” Rana explains.
These efforts help them confront the many intermediaries who exploit families’ despair.
Rana’s family, for instance, once sent an acquaintance to meet a Libyan man who claimed their son was imprisoned and could be freed for 1,000 dollars. The man took the money, entered the prison, and never came out.
Another time, a Syrian man contacted Mohamed’s mother, Aeda, via Facebook and tried to extort her using a fake, AI-generated image of her son.
“They know parents are vulnerable and ready to pay,” Aeda sighs.
“All these people keep us trapped in a painful, endless wait.”
Thanks to the WhatsApp group, “when we search for one person, we search for everyone. As soon as we get a lead, it can help all of us. It’s as if we share the same story,” says Khawla.
Caught in limbo
Fatima lost track of her 29-year-old son, Abd Almalek Albahloul, on March 22, 2024.
As a widow with no surviving children, she began searching for him, alone, a year ago. Her findings remain uncertain: her son may have left Libya and been rescued by an NGO in the Mediterranean.
“I contacted people who were on the rescue boat there, and there were different versions, so I can’t be sure of anything,” she tells The New Arab.
Three months after his disappearance, hope returned: “I saw a video online, filmed inside a Libyan prison.”
On her phone, a still image from the footage shows a man sitting among a crowd, hands raised. She is convinced he’s her son. Since then, she has lived with both the hope that he’s alive and the torment of knowing he might be imprisoned.
“Libyan prisons are horrible, there’s disease, lice, torture, who knows?” says the 48-year-old woman, who now suffers from memory lapses and concentration difficulties.
“Families of the missing live like they are living dead,” she says softly.
During her search, Fatima met Rana and joined the family network. She took part in the demonstrations and, last March, submitted her son’s details to officials at the Libyan embassy.
Protesting with others helps ease her pain. “It’s important to be with other families. We share our sorrow,” she shares.
Yet the uncertainty over her son’s fate drives her into a despair nothing can soothe.
'It’s like a mission impossible'
The WhatsApp group has grown steadily. Today, it gathers around 200 relatives of Syrians missing in Libya, from across the country.
In a living room in Deraa, among eight other family meetings that day, a man in a black shirt smokes, his arm resting on an armchair.
“We lost contact with my nephew an hour before his boat left the Libyan coast, on August 26, 2024,” says Abd Elah Mohammad Albaradan, 50.
His nephew, Rami Abdelkader, a 29-year-old farmer, left behind his wife and three children.
Abd believes the transitional government of Ahmed al-Sharaa “isn’t doing enough.”
“Arab and European countries should work together on this issue,” he tells The New Arab.
After the September 22 demonstration, five families were received by the National Commission for Missing Persons established in May.
“They asked us for names and dates of disappearance,” reports Rana, who attended the meeting.
“Every time we protest, they make promises, but nothing follows. We’re given non-answers. Everything we do feels useless,” laments Fatima.
“We have to fend for ourselves,” adds Dawla, Khawla’s daughter and sister of the missing Yasser.
Mahmoud Aswad, a member of the commission’s advisory board and head of Lawyers and Doctors for Human Rights (LDHR), confirms that the body created as part of Syria’s transitional justice process will also include Syrians who disappeared abroad, not only those detained by the former regime.
But the commission will not conduct investigations outside the country.
It plans instead to rely on organisations such as the Red Cross and the IOM to build its own database of the missing. The task, Mahmoud warns, is enormous, given the patchy or non-existent data.
“It’s like a mission impossible,” he says.
“But not for these families who can’t forget their loved ones. They will keep pushing us to act. We won’t give up, it’s our duty.”
Rana remains sceptical about whether the commission can really deliver answers.
“We have no choice but to believe in it,” she admits.
On their own, they seek truth
For the past year, Emad Hasan Alrawashda has been searching on his own for any trace of 26 Syrians who vanished at sea on August 26, 2024, all on the same boat.
This 57-year-old Syrian has been living in Northern Ireland since 2018. His son, daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, five grandchildren, and a nephew were meant to join him in the UK.
They, too, were on that boat. None have been heard from since. The youngest grandchild was two years old.
Emad speaks with quiet certainty, but his confidence is veiled with doubt.
“What I know for sure is that they exist, they’re alive. But no one tells me anything.”
Days after the shipwreck that claimed his entire family, Emad flew to Libya to search for them himself, as well as for other missing Syrians from Deraa, like Abd’s nephew.
He scoured prisons, met Libyan officers and militia members, called NGOs hundreds of times, and filed detailed reports on the 26 missing people to Libyan authorities and the Syrian embassy.
The information he received was vague, contradictory, and unreliable. One day, his family was said to be alive in prison, the next day dead.
Driven by despair, he spent seven months in Libya, with brief returns to Ireland.
“On the plane back from Libya, I didn’t want to return here to Syria. I didn’t want to see the families, because I had nothing to tell them, nothing to bring back,” he says.
In 2023, the IOM recorded that around 5,000 migrants had been detained in official Libyan prisons, while an unknown number are held in secret facilities run by militias.
“These are enforced disappearances,” denounces Fatima.
“No one gives us information. Why are they in prison in Libya? Why can’t they contact their families?” she cries.
Since 2015, the European Union has provided at least €450 million to the Libyan Coast Guard to prevent migrants from reaching Europe — the same Libyan coastguards who intercept people at sea, before they are detained in Libyan prisons, according to IOM.
“Raising the issue of Syrians who disappeared at Europe’s borders means questioning how Europe treats those trying to enter its territory,” analyses Khaled Al Helou of the Syrian Network for Human Rights.
“The new Syrian authorities are not, for now, in a position of strength to challenge European policies,” he concludes.
Images by Valentina Camu
Maïa Courtois has spent seven years investigating migration policies and border issues, also covering social work and the environment, with work published in Mediapart, InfoMigrants, Reporterre, and The Guardian
Maël Galisson is an independent journalist focusing on migration and border violence for French and international media
Simon Mauvieux covers migration policies and border issues, focusing on the France-UK border, and investigates labour conditions in the delivery sector, with work published in Basta, Alternatives Économiques, and Mediapart
Majd Alboukai is a Syrian translator, fixer, journalist, and cultural organiser based in Homs. He is the co-founder of the Homs Cinema Society and has supported international media coverage through translation, local production, and field coordination
This investigation was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe