Syria: Post-Assad Transition Should Center Human Rights

(Beirut) – The ousting of Bashar al-Assad’s government by armed opposition groups has created a momentous opportunity for Syria to break with decades of repression and turn the page on human rights, Human Rights Watch said today. A better future for Syria requires addressing decades of abuse by the former government and other warring parties during the country’s 13-year conflict, ensuring accountability, and protecting Syrians regardless of their ethnic or sectarian backgrounds or political affiliations.

“The Syrian people have endured more than a decade of brutal repression and conflict,” said Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “This is a critical moment to reject the horror show of the past, rebuild trust, and lay the groundwork for a society where everyone is treated with dignity.”

Stretching over more than 50 years, Baath Party rule in Syria accumulated an appalling record of human rights violations. The Syrian government under Bashar al-Assad committed countless atrocities, crimes against humanity, and other abuses during his 24-year presidency. These included widespread and systematic arbitrary arrests, torture, enforced disappearances, deaths in detention, use of chemical weapons, starvation as a weapon of war, and indiscriminate and targeted attacks against civilians and civilian objects.

Non-state armed groups operating in Syria, including Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and factions of the Syrian National Army (SNA) who initiated the offensive on November 27, are also responsible for human rights abuses and war crimes. 

Syria’s new leadership has an unprecedented opportunity to lead by example on human rights, including by protecting basic rights in a new constitution. The new authorities should ratify and put into practice a host of international legal and human rights instruments and treaties that the Assad government did not, Human Rights Watch said.

Human Rights Watch recommends urgent steps to all the authorities in control of areas of Syria: 

Justice and Accountability for Past Abuses

• Secure and preserve evidence of atrocities. There is an urgent need to collect and safeguard evidence, including from mass grave sites and government records and archives, that could be vital evidence in future domestic and international accountability processes.
• Immediately invite to Syria, fully cooperate with, and ensure unhindered access to independent monitors including the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism for Syria (IIIM) and the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria.
• Ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and give it retroactive jurisdiction back to 2002 by filing a declaration with the court. The new authorities should also work to fully align Syria’s national legislation with the Rome Statute and international law.

Protection of Civilians, Minorities, and Cultural Heritage 

• Protect civilians from violence and ensure their right to live in safety. Deploy security units when necessary to protect religious and ethnic minority groups that are perceived or suspected supporters of the former government.
• Take immediate steps to secure and guard weapons storage facilities in the areas under control of the interim authorities.
• Prioritize the clearance and destruction of landmines and explosive remnants of war, including facilitating the work of humanitarian agencies, training and equipping specialists, and ensuring that risk awareness and victim assistance efforts are adequately funded.
• Safeguard cultural and heritage sites, ensuring they are not looted or destroyed.
• Address the humanitarian and protection needs of displaced populations, including establishing processes and options for safe returns that meet international standards and protect the rights and dignity of all Syrians.
• Address the protection and safety needs of women, children, people with disabilities, older people, and other gropus most at risk of human rights abuses.

Addressing Detention and the Disappeared

• As thousands of prisoners, some of whom have languished in horrifying detention conditions for decades, are released from prisons and detention facilities across the country, authorities should take urgent steps to provide them with health care, psychosocial support, and rehabilitation; safeguard their dignity; and facilitate their swift reunions with their families.
• Establish a system to track and manage prisoner releases. Ensure fair, impartial justice for those suspected of crimes.
• Immediately ensure that anyone who is detained is only detained according to law and is brought before an independent judge or judicial panel at regular intervals to consider the legality and necessity of their detention with the power to order their release. Release all detainees who are not lawfully detained.
• Treat all detainees, including captured fighters and former members of the Assad government and security forces, humanely and in accordance with international human rights and humanitarian law standards.
• Cooperate with the UN Independent Institution on Missing Persons (IIMP) to clarify what happened to the disappeared and give it full and unhindered access to Syria’s detention facilities.

Governance Reform

• Establish mechanisms to prevent looting of civilian properties, protect key infrastructure, and ensure the delivery of essential services such as water, electricity, and health care. Ensure essential services are accessible to people with disabilities. A transparent process to document and safeguard abandoned properties is critical to prevent further disputes and ensure their eventual reparation.
• Build a governance structure that represents all Syrians and ensure that decision-making processes are accessible, inclusive, and participatory. This means actively involving all sectors of Syrian society in shaping the country’s future, including women, people with disabilities, minority groups, civil society organizations, displaced communities, and political actors from diverse backgrounds.
• Establish systems for transparent consultations and equal representation to ensure that no group is excluded from contributing to Syria’s recovery and rebuilding.
• Allow prompt and unhindered access to humanitarian organizations and UN agencies to deliver impartial assistance to civilians in need, particularly in rural and remote areas.
• Improve cooperation with humanitarian organizations and the UN to ensure assistance is inclusive and fully accessible to people with disabilities. 

Preventing Further Abuses by Armed Groups 

• Publicly commit to upholding fundamental rights and freedoms for all, free from discrimination, including by guaranteeing freedom of movement, assembly, and expression.
• Refrain from arbitrary arrests or any other form of repression, including harassment and intimidation.
• Provide immediate access for the International Committee of the Red Cross to all detainees in the custody of HTS and the SNA and allow all detainees legal representation.
• Cooperate with local and international human rights organizations to document violations and ensure justice.
• Urgently review and amend penal and criminal procedure codes, as well as laws restricting association, expression, and political parties, bringing them into line with international human rights standards
• Urgently reform the judicial system and security services and ensure training for all staff on human rights standards.

Syria’s new leadership should consider asking UN mechanisms and institutions to play a role in post-Assad Syria. The UN could deploy civilian police officers from various countries to Syria to help monitor and train local police and send human rights monitors to parts of the country that were considered loyal to Assad or where serious tensions may arise. 

The international community, including the UN, the European Union and its member states, the United States, Russia, China, and the League of Arab States, should ensure that aid to the present or future government, including election assistance, contributes to respecting human rights and creating conditions for free and fair elections.

Other countries, UN institutions, and Syria’s emerging interim government should work with local authorities in northeast Syria to secure entry of critical humanitarian assistance to displaced people and to secure facilities there housing former Islamic State (ISIS) suspects and family members.

The US, UK, EU, and others should urgently consider lifting general or sectoral sanctions—such as on the purchase, sale, or export of goods and materials relating to or contributing to specific industries—as well as sanctions on Syrian financial institutions. Human Rights Watch has documented the negative impact of these sanctions on humanitarian operations. HTS and others considered terrorist groups are subject to sanctions that prohibit making funds, assets, and economic resources available directly or indirectly to them.

Neighboring countries and others that host sizable numbers of Syrian refugees should not rush to deport or otherwise expel Syrians from their territories and should maintain their temporary protection or refugee status. With Syria’s economic crisis persisting, infrastructure in shambles, and unstable security conditions, forcibly expelling refugees or pressuring to them to return at this juncture would risk compounding the humanitarian crisis and violating the international prohibition on nonrefoulement; that is, returning people to places where they would experience torture or other serious abuses. The priority should be creating conditions inside Syria that guarantee voluntary, safe, and dignified returns in line with international standards.

“Years of failed or bloody transitions of power in the Middle East leave communities understandably fearful and skeptical of Syria’s new reality,” Fakih said. “Nevertheless, this moment presents an opportunity to prove that a different path is possible, one that prioritizes justice, accountability, and human rights. Syria’s new leadership can show the region and the world that a rights-respecting transition that secures the rights of all is possible.”