Media Coverage

French judicial authorities issued international arrest warrants for Syrian President Bashar Assad, his brother and two army generals for alleged complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity, lawyers for Syrian victims said Wednesday. They include a 2013 chemical attack on rebel-held...

Syria boycotted a hearing at the United Nations’ top court on Tuesday where the Netherlands and Canada accused Damascus of a years-long campaign of “institutionalized” torture against its own people. The hearing was focused on a preliminary Dutch and Canadian request for the court to impose orders—...

Thirty-one Australian women and children forcibly held for four years in a Syrian detention camp have told the federal government to prove it cannot bring them home, or “bring their bodies to the court” in Australia. In filings before the federal court, Save the Children Australia—representing 11...

United Nations investigators say that human rights violations and abuse in Syria are sowing the seeds for further violence and radicalization, despite diplomatic efforts to stabilize the situation in the country, including through its re-admission to the League of Arab States. The three-member...

It has been 10 years since the chemical attacks in eastern Ghouta, on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus. In 2013, amidst Syria’s war, the Syrian regime attacked the towns of Zamalka, Ein Tarma, and Irbin in Ghouta countryside with a nerve agent. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights...

According to numbers collected by the United Nations in 2021, over a decade of civil war means that around 28 percent of the Syrian population—aged over 2—now suffers from a disability of some kind. The numbers are even higher in parts of northern Syria. The UN says that around 37 percent of the...

An alleged former member of a Syrian pro-government militia has been arrested in Germany on suspicion of crimes against humanity related to the abuse and torture of civilians in the early years of his country’s civil war, prosecutors said Thursday. The man, identified only as Ahmad H. in line with...

A UN-backed human rights advocate says hundreds of boys—some as young as 11—held in detention camps run by US-backed, Kurdish-led forces in northeastern Syria have been wrongly separated from their mothers on the “unproven” belief that they pose a security risk. Fionnuala Ni Aolain, an independent...

In the early years of Syria’s brutal conflict, top government officials established and directed paramilitary groups known as “shabbiha” to help the state crack down on opponents, war crimes investigators say. In a report, the Commission for International Justice and Accountability published seven...

The UN General Assembly is to vote this week on setting up an independent institution on missing persons in Syria. At the height of the civil war in Syria, Ahmad Helmi, an activist and human rights defender, became one of the many victims of “enforced disappearance.” Currently, more than 12 years...