1. Introduction
Since its beginning in 2011, the armed conflict in Syria has been marked by a preoccupying number of enforced disappearances perpetrated by state officials as well as similar crimes attributed to non-state actors. This situation has been documented, in part, by the United Nations (UN) Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) in its annual reports and cases. The Syrian civil war began in early 2011 when Syrian adolescents across the country took to the streets to protest then president Bashar Assad’s regime by scrawling anti-regime graffiti.Footnote 1 On 15 March 2011, protestors demanded democratic reforms and the release of political prisoners in major protests that took place in the cities of Deraa, Damascus, and Aleppo.Footnote 2 In July 2011, the conflict escalated further when military defectors announced the formation of the Free Syrian Army, which sought to overthrow the Assad regime.Footnote 3 By 2012, the conflict had escalated into a full-scale civil war,Footnote 4 and a number of other rebel groups had emerged across Syria, including Hay’at Tahrir al Sham and the Syrian Democratic Forces.Footnote 5 Other actors, including the United States, Russia, and Turkey, also became involved around that time.Footnote 6
Between the beginning of the armed conflict in Syria in March 2011 until the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, the WGEID recorded an increasing number of enforced disappearances perpetrated across the country annually. In total, over the course of the civil war, an estimated 150,000 people were detained or disappeared in Syria — with the majority of these individuals having been detained by Assad’s regime.Footnote 7 The Human Rights Data Analysis Group estimates that approximately thirty-four thousand individuals were killed in custody, with 80 percent of those deaths being attributed to state actors.Footnote 8
In late 2024, the Assad regime fell after a rebel offensive seized control of major regime-controlled cities throughout Syria.Footnote 9 The country is currently governed by a patchwork of rebel groups, and a consensus regarding how Syria will be run going forward has yet to be reached.Footnote 10 The fall of Assad’s regime has created new opportunities to investigate the former regime’s detention centres and to determine the fates of the missing and disappeared. Part of the discussion on this topic relates to whether enforced disappearances constitute a form of torture under international law, in general and in the specific context of Syria. This article argues that, in certain circumstances, enforced disappearances constitute not only torture but also war crimes and crimes against humanity. It details how the WGEID and other institutions have documented such practices in the context of the Syrian conflict as well as the impacts that they have had on victims.
2. Human rights law and enforced disappearances and torture
International human rights law addresses the issues of enforced disappearances and torture both from a normative and institutional point of view.Footnote 11
A. The legal concept of enforced disappearance
International human rights law defines enforced disappearances as
the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law.Footnote 12
This legal conceptFootnote 13 is thus composed of three essential distinguishing features: an individual’s deprivation of liberty, undertaken by agents of the state, followed by the denial or concealment of information regarding the abductee’s fate or whereabouts.Footnote 14
The Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1992, sets out a state’s obligations to prevent, sanction, and remedy this gross violation of human rights.Footnote 15 These norms and principles were reiterated in the 2006 International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (International Convention on Enforced Disappearance).Footnote 16 While the convention only applies to countries that have ratified it, the declaration applies to all states.Footnote 17 Both instruments provide that “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever … can be invoked to justify enforced disappearance.”Footnote 18 Indeed, it is generally recognized that enforced disappearances are today prohibited by customary international law, recognized as a peremptory norm of international law and that they constitute a crime within the meaning of international criminal law.Footnote 19
Numerous international legal instruments state that enforced disappearances can constitute a crime against humanity under certain circumstances, particularly when they occur as a widespread or systematic practice. For example, the Rome Statute sets forth that the enforced disappearance of persons constitutes a crime against humanity “when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack[.]”Footnote 20 Similarly, the International Convention on Enforced Disappearance sets forth that “[t]he widespread or systematic practice of enforced disappearance constitutes a crime against humanity as defined in applicable international law and shall attract the consequences provided for under such applicable international law.”Footnote 21 In addition, while international humanitarian law does not explicitly refer to “enforced disappearances” as such, the International Committee of the Red Cross has found that enforced disappearances violate a number of customary rules of international law, including the prohibition of the arbitrary deprivation of liberty, the prohibition of torture and other cruel or inhuman treatment, and the prohibition of murder.Footnote 22
An enforced disappearance constitutes a composite violation of several human rights guaranteed by international law, including the right to liberty and security of person; the right to a fair trial; the right to judicial guarantees; the right to an effective remedy, including the right to reparation and compensation; the right to life; the right to physical and moral integrity of the person, including the right not to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; the right of everyone to recognition of their legal personality; the right to identity; and the right to the truth.Footnote 23
As a matter of international human rights law, “victim of enforced disappearance” means that the disappeared person and any individual has suffered harm as a direct result of an enforced disappearance. Each victim has the right to know the truth regarding the circumstances of the enforced disappearance, the progress and results of the investigation, and the fate of the disappeared person.Footnote 24 Within the UN human rights system, a special procedure mandate of the Human Rights Council has addressed the issue of enforced disappearances more extensively.
B. The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances
The special procedures of the Human Rights Council are independent human rights experts with mandates to report and advise on human rights from a thematic or country-specific perspective.Footnote 25 These experts are appointed by the Human Rights Council, and they act in their personal capacity and independently from any government or organization, on a voluntary basis, for a term of three-to-six years. Special procedures’ mandates cover all state members to the UN, irrespective of whether a state has ratified relevant international conventions. There are forty-six thematic mandates and fourteen country mandates, which include both individuals and groups of experts.Footnote 26 In carrying out their mandate, the special procedures: (1) transmit urgent appeals to governments and other actors on strategies, policies, and measures to address gross violations of human rights and serious violations of international humanitarian law; (2) conduct country visits to assess transitional justice measures that have been taken to address such violations, identify gaps and challenges, and make recommendations thereon; and (3) submit annual reports to the Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly on the activities of the mandate and the above-mentioned measures. The special procedures work in close cooperation with governments, inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations, and civil society. This work includes participating in relevant workshops or other meetings, providing technical assistance when requested, writing reports and articles, issuing public statements, and making inquiries and responding to queries about issues pertaining to their mandate. Special procedures conduct their work with the support of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
In 1980, the then United Nations Commission on Human RightsFootnote 27 created the WGEID, and the Human Rights Council has renewed its mandate ever since. The WGEID is made up of five independent experts. The WGEID is mainly responsible for assisting relatives of the disappeared to communicate with governments to establish the fate or whereabouts of their loved ones. The group also assists states in the implementation of the obligations arising from the 1992 Declaration on Disappearances.
The WGEID holds three sessions per year, during which it processes individual cases of alleged enforced disappearances, following its urgent procedure, which are registered in its database. The WGEID then asks states to supply information as to the fate or whereabouts of the victims as well as to the measures taken to investigate the crimes linked to the disappearance. It also adopts general allegations dealing with issues of a systemic nature on enforced disappearances in a given country and can also engage governments through urgent appeals or rapid interventions to avoid future disappearances and harassment of human rights defenders. It carries out approximately two country visits each year, which lead to reports on the situation of enforced disappearances in the specific countries, providing recommendations to the concerned authorities.Footnote 28 The WGEID is governed by the Declaration of Disappearances, its own methods of work,Footnote 29 as well as the Code of Conduct of the Special Procedures. Footnote 30 In accordance with its humanitarian mandate, the WGEID can look into allegations of disappearances committed by all states, irrespective of the human rights treaties that have been ratified. Indeed, most of the norms contained in the Declaration of Disappearances are also norms of customary international law.Footnote 31
In addition to the WGEID, the UN also counts on the Committee on Enforced Disappearances, created by the International Convention on Enforced Disappearance. It examines reports from state parties to the convention and makes recommendations on the implementation of the treaty, registers requests for urgent actions, receives individual complaints from victims of a violation of the convention by a state party, and processes so-called inter-state communications.Footnote 32
C. Enforced disappearances as a form of torture
Torture is also defined by international law as the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering, by agents of the state, for a specific purpose, such as the extraction of information, a confession, intimidation, or punishment.Footnote 33 This legal concept is thus composed of three essential distinguishing features, in addition to actions attributable to state officials: intentionality, purpose, and severity of suffering. There are strong arguments to consider that enforced disappearance is a form of torture. Indeed, enforced disappearances have often been equated with torture, reflecting the severe human rights violations that they entail.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) has played a pivotal role in addressing enforced disappearances. In its landmark decision in Velasquez Rodriguez v Honduras, the Court highlighted that enforced disappearances aim to suppress activities deemed unlawful by radically disrupting legal guarantees of liberty and security.Footnote 34 The practice of enforced disappearance, as revealed through numerous testimonies, often involves interrogation methods without limits and usually leads to the victim’s physical elimination and the concealment of their remains. The Court has consistently recognized enforced disappearances as violations of personal integrity and, in some cases, as a form of torture.Footnote 35 For instance, in the Omeara Carrascal and Others v Colombia case, the Court noted that the practice of enforced disappearance violates the right to personal integrity by subjecting detainees to repressive and abusive treatment, including torture and murder, even when specific acts cannot be proven. The Court also emphasized that prolonged isolation and coercive solitary confinement constitute cruel and inhuman treatment.Footnote 36 Regarding the impact on relatives, the Court’s decision in Chitay Nech v Guatemala observed that the denial of justice and ongoing uncertainty about the whereabouts of the disappeared creates significant psychological trauma. This trauma alters family dynamics, impairs social relationships, and perpetuates suffering and fear, which have long-lasting effects on the relatives’ sense of belonging and community.Footnote 37 This perspective aligns with findings in other cases such as Anzualdo Castro v Peru and Trujillo-Oroza v Bolivia. Footnote 38
Similar conclusions have been reached by other international human rights bodies. The UN Human Rights Committee,Footnote 39 the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights,Footnote 40 and the European Court of Human RightsFootnote 41 have all acknowledged the severe impacts of enforced disappearances on both victims and their families. These bodies have highlighted that enforced disappearance facilitates the use of torture and inhumane treatment during interrogations. Even when direct evidence of such torture is absent, the prolonged and indefinite isolation of victims contributes to severe psychological distress and suffering that meet the criteria for torture under international law.
The WGEID’s General Comment on the Right to the Truth emphasizes that the right of relatives to know the fate and whereabouts of disappeared persons is absolute and inalienable.Footnote 42 The comment highlights that no legitimate state interest or exceptional circumstance can justify restricting this right. The continued lack of information about a loved one’s fate adds to the enduring suffering of families, which is considered a form of torture itself. In its recent report on enforced disappearances in the context of migration, the WGEID further clarified that enforced disappearance constitutes multiple human rights violations and is a form of torture or inhuman treatment.Footnote 43 This is due not only to the direct suffering inflicted on the disappeared individuals but also to the psychological anguish endured by their relatives.
The overarching theme in these judicial decisions and reports is the recognition of enforced disappearances as not merely an administrative or legal failure but also as a grave violation of human rights. The practice of enforced disappearance inherently involves multiple forms of abuse, including torture, both of the disappeared individuals and their families. The legal framework and judicial precedents continue to evolve to address these severe human rights abuses, underscoring the international community’s commitment to combating such violations and upholding the rights and dignity of all individuals affected by enforced disappearances.
3. Enforced disappearances in Syria
In the Syrian context, thousands of enforced disappearances have occurred in recent years. Many have been denounced before the WGEID, which has addressed the issue in many of its reports. There are credible indications that, in many instances these occurrences constitute torture. In addition, the widespread nature of enforced disappearances in the Syrian context strongly suggests that they constitute a crime against humanity. Finally, the Syrian regime’s failure to take steps to register all persons deprived of their liberty suggests that these enforced disappearances may constitute a violation of international humanitarian law.Footnote 44
A. The WGEID and enforced disappearances in Syria
Between March 2011 until the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, the WGEID recorded an increasing number of enforced disappearances perpetrated across the country each year. For example, the total number of outstanding cases of enforced or involuntary disappearance in Syria reported to the WGEID has increased each year between 2014 and 2023.Footnote 45 The missing persons crisis in Syria ultimately grew so severe that, in June 2023, the UN General Assembly voted to create a new mechanism to address the issue.Footnote 46 The WGEID repeatedly denounced the pattern of enforced disappearances that was documented throughout the Syrian conflict.Footnote 47 WGEID sources documented a systematic pattern, in which men over the age of fifteen were arbitrarily arrested and detained by Syrian government authorities or militias at checkpoints or during house searches and later disappeared.Footnote 48 Available evidence suggests that many of those who disappeared were subsequently victims of mass executions.Footnote 49 On four occasions, the WGEID urged the UN Security Council to consider referring the crisis of enforced disappearances in Syria to the International Criminal Court.Footnote 50
According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, as of August 2023, at least 112,713 of the individuals arrested in Syria between March 2011 and August 2023 remained forcibly disappeared.Footnote 51 This number included 3,105 children and 6,698 women.Footnote 52 According to these reports, the former Syrian regime was responsible for 85.26 percent of those disappearances, including the enforced disappearances of 2,327 children and 5,739 women.Footnote 53 These statistics are likely an under-estimate; throughout the conflict, there has been an issue of under-reporting of disappearances owing, in part, to a fear of reprisal on the part of family members for reporting the disappearance of their loved ones.Footnote 54 This fear of reprisal was often credible; as is discussed further below, many of those who have reported disappearances have faced reprisal by agents of the former Syrian government.Footnote 55 Due to issues of chronic under-reporting, the number of enforced disappearances in Syria that were reported to the WGEID annually likely represents a small fraction of the total number of people who were forcibly disappeared by the former Syrian government.Footnote 56
Syrian government actors often carried out mass arrests, particularly of men,Footnote 57 in a way that appeared random and indiscriminate.Footnote 58 In most cases, the precise reason for the arrest was not disclosed.Footnote 59 Disappeared persons were often abducted in public, in full view of family and neighbours.Footnote 60 In several cases, Syrian military officers arrested and physically beat the alleged victims while they stood in the street or while they were being taken to a car.Footnote 61 Relatives of the disappeared believe that the intention behind the public mass arrests was to “incite terror in the local community.”Footnote 62 The detainees’ deprivation of liberty was frequently followed “by a complete refusal on the part of the Syrian authorities to disclose information about the fate or whereabouts of the concerned person, or even to acknowledge their existence.”Footnote 63 Disappeared persons were often prevented from communicating with friends, family, and legal representatives.Footnote 64
There was never any official, up-to-date registry of all persons deprived of their liberty.Footnote 65 The mechanism that was mandated to inquire about the fate and whereabouts of disappeared persons, which was under the responsibility of the Syrian Ministries of Justice, Interior, and National Reconciliation, proved ineffective.Footnote 66 Death certificates were rarely issued when detainees died in custody.Footnote 67 When death certificates were issued, the standard practice of issuing death certificates for the disappeared (often years after the enforced disappearance began) — which was done without specifying the cause of death, whether or not there had been an investigation, and without handing over the body of the deceased to their family members — was not an effective means of establishing the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared.Footnote 68
Investigating the fate of disappeared persons in Syria was dangerous and difficult, and relatives who investigated their loved ones’ disappearance often faced reprisals.Footnote 69 Relatives often attempted to locate their loved ones through informal channels,Footnote 70 such as personal connections to members of the military and Syrian prison survivors and death certificates found at civil registry offices, or through the identification of their loved one among the 53,275 photographs that were smuggled out of Syria by a Syrian regime defector, code-named “Caesar,” which depicted at least 6,786 detainees who died in detention (the “Caesar photographs”).Footnote 71 Families were subjected to harassment, arrests, and extortion while searching for their relatives.Footnote 72 Women were often subjected to physical and emotional blackmail and sexual exploitation when inquiring about missing persons at state institutions.Footnote 73
The families of disappeared persons frequently paid large amounts of money (often during a period of severe economic difficulty) to brokers in exchange for information about their loved ones.Footnote 74 The individuals involved in brokering this information sometimes engaged in deception, accepting large sums of money and then cutting off all communication with the relatives.Footnote 75 Some relatives have stated that “brokers have gone so far as to mislead them about their loved one’s death.”Footnote 76 In many instances, fears of reprisals have prevented relatives from inquiring further into the fate and whereabouts of their loved ones.Footnote 77 Because male family members were often particularly fearful, “it [was] often female family members who put themselves at risk to uncover the fate or whereabouts of their missing relatives.”Footnote 78 When relatives did manage to obtain information regarding the fate of the disappeared, it was usually through informal sources, such as personal connections to members of the military.Footnote 79 Often, relatives were only able to obtain information by paying informal sources enormous sums of money.Footnote 80 When relatives have attempted to follow up on leads obtained through these channels, “they have come up against the state’s refusal to verify the hard-won information by acknowledging the disappearance.”Footnote 81
Available documentation shows that many of those individuals forcibly disappeared by the Syrian government were subjected to torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, which could occur from the moment of arrest and continue throughout the disappearance.Footnote 82 The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic (IICISAR), which is the UN body tasked with investigating and reporting on alleged violations of international human rights law in Syria, reported that many of the former detainees held in government facilities that they interviewed were subjected to torture or ill-treatment using a range of methods, including beatings,Footnote 83 electric shocks,Footnote 84 burning of body parts,Footnote 85 sexual violence,Footnote 86 and various psychological torture techniques, including threats,Footnote 87 humiliation, food deprivation,Footnote 88 and inhumane and unhygienic conditions.Footnote 89 One released detainee told the IICISAR that his torture was so extreme that he could not walk for seven months after he was released.Footnote 90 Another told the IICISAR that, on one occasion, he was interrogated and beaten for three continuous days and nights.Footnote 91 Interviewees from many facilities recounted listening to the torture, crying, and screaming of other detainees in government prisons.Footnote 92
Many of the forcibly disappeared ultimately died in detention. As noted above, the Caesar photographs depict at least 6,786 detainees who died in detention.Footnote 93 The team of forensic pathologists from Physicians for Human Rights reviewed a subset of the Caesar photographs for evidence of torture and identified signs of violent blunt-force trauma, suffocation, and starvation, and, in one instance, they identified the cause of death as a gunshot wound to the head.Footnote 94
Accountability mechanisms for enforced disappearance did not exist in Syria, and enforced disappearance was not codified as an autonomous offence under the applicable criminal legislation.Footnote 95 Concerns over enforced disappearances were addressed in an “ad hoc fashion through … legal articles spread across several laws, including the Personal Status Law and the Civil Code,” both of which were issued decades before the missing persons crisis began.Footnote 96 Between 2011 and 2024, almost twenty amnesty laws were enacted, having the effect of exempting those alleged to have committed human rights violations, including enforced disappearances, from any criminal proceedings or sanctions.Footnote 97 Additionally, applicable Syrian legislation under the former Syrian government did not permit the prosecution of members of the army, its intelligence branches, the Internal Security Forces, or the General Intelligence Department.Footnote 98 These individuals could be prosecuted only pursuant to a prosecution order issued by the commander-in-chief of the army and armed forces or the chief of staff.Footnote 99
Further, pursuant to Legislative Decree no. 55 and its amendments, the judicial police and its delegates were empowered to investigate a range of crimes, including state security crimes, and to detain individuals for a period of seven days without access to any judicial review.Footnote 100 This seven-day period was renewable for up to sixty days with permission from the public prosecutor.Footnote 101 Sources from the WGEID have stated that the provisions articulated in Legislative Decree no. 55 and its amendments were often used to detain political opponents.Footnote 102 During this period, these individuals were exposed to heightened risks of enforced disappearance, torture, and other forms of ill-treatment.Footnote 103
B. Effects of enforced disappearances on Syrian victims
For the disappeared person, an enforced disappearance necessarily implies extreme anguish and psychological harm. Disappeared persons experience “the violence of the abduction, [and] the anguish of being held defenceless in an unknown place.”Footnote 104 As discussed above, individuals who were disappeared by the former Syrian government were subjected to torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment during their time in detention.Footnote 105 Enforced disappearances also cause relatives and loved ones immense anguish and suffering. Relatives of disappeared persons often struggle to deal with grief and mourning in light of the uncertainty regarding the fate of the disappeared person. Enforced disappearances can cause family members to experience challenges to identity and dignity, including the questioning of social and political values, humiliation and brokenness, blame, and stigma and shame.Footnote 106
The disappearance can cause suffering linked to traditional cultural dynamics.Footnote 107 For example, the spouses of the disappeared may have new obligations or duties towards their in-laws and may experience the possibility of losing offspring or the ownership of land or property.Footnote 108 Housing, land, and property documents in Syria often exclude the names of women so that female-headed households may face challenges proving inheritance rights.Footnote 109 For the children of the disappeared, the enforced disappearance often results in “the loss of not one parental relationship, but two, as the remaining caregiver struggles to deal with the psychological harm caused by the disappearance, while shouldering the new [economic and familial] responsibilities that have been thrust on them.”Footnote 110 Under the former government, enforced disappearances could also disrupt families, given that Syrian women are subject to discrimination under Syrian law. In Syria, the guardianship of a minor is entrusted to the father.Footnote 111 Under Article 172 of the Syrian Personal Status Law, if the father dies or is absent, guardianship goes to the paternal grandfather or to one of the father’s other relatives.Footnote 112 The mother’s guardianship rights come last.Footnote 113
As indicated by the WGEID,Footnote 114 enforced disappearances can cause families to fall into extreme poverty, particularly when the family breadwinner is abducted. As indicated by the organization Women Now for Development, in Syria, men are typically the main breadwinners in the family, and, when a breadwinner is disappeared, their wives may struggle to afford basic necessities as these women are often only able to access low-wage work.Footnote 115 Further, working women often become responsible for both household labour and paid employment simultaneously, thus taking on an enormous amount of labour.Footnote 116 As is the case all over the world, women must assume all of these responsibilities while they pursue actions to obtain truth and justice regarding their loved ones’ disappearance.Footnote 117
Families of disappeared persons often face challenges managing the assets and property of disappeared persons. Judges sometimes refuse to assign legal representatives or agents to missing persons.Footnote 118 The challenges related to managing assets increased after the Syrian Ministry of Justice issued Circular no. 30 in September 2019.Footnote 119 This law required an individual to obtain a security clearance before applying for a power of attorney for an absent or missing person.Footnote 120 The financial uncertainty caused by the disappearance of the family breadwinner acutely harms children. It puts young women and girls at risk of forced and child marriage.Footnote 121 Following the disappearance of a family breadwinner, young men and boys in Syria often “step into stereotypically male adult roles, including by becoming income earners, to meet the needs of the family.”Footnote 122 As a result, the forcible disappearance of a male breadwinner increases the risk that young men and boys will be forced into child labor.Footnote 123 In Syria, young men and boys whose parent is disappeared start to work from around the age of ten years old.Footnote 124 Although the WGEID’s sources suggest that young men and boys in Syria are more likely to be forced into child labour as a result of a forced disappearance, young women and girls are also sometimes affected.Footnote 125
The enforced disappearance of a family member, and particularly of a family breadwinner, has been shown to cause a reduction in children’s educational development. Young Syrian women and girls have expressed the feeling that “losing their father has meant losing a pillar of support for their education.”Footnote 126 They were often forced to pause their education in order to work or provide additional domestic support.Footnote 127 Young men and boys have also stated that, following the disappearance of a family breadwinner, “education was incompatible with their new role within the family, as they took on responsibilities including earning to support the family and the care of younger siblings.”Footnote 128
4. Conclusion
Since the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, further details of the horrors that took place in the state-run detention centres have been brought to light. More details are likely to emerge in the months to come as the work of the WGEID and other UN bodies unfolds. On 19 September 2011, the WGEID requested an invitation to visit Syria to investigate reports of enforced disappearances.Footnote 129 Despite several reminders, the WGEID never received a response from the former government of Syria.Footnote 130 In 2021, the WGEID sent a general allegation (that is, a summary of complaints received or gathered from states, reliable sources such as the relatives of disappeared persons, and credible non-governmental organizations) to Syria regarding “the widespread practice of enforced disappearance against Sunni Muslims in Aleppo, Damascus, Homs, Idlib, Latakia and Rif-Dimashq.”Footnote 131 As of February 2023, the WGEID had not received a response.Footnote 132 That month, the WGEID sent Syria a second general allegation, in which the WGEID expressed concern regarding Syria’s failure to adopt preventative measures, to effectively investigate enforced disappearances, and to hold perpetrators to account.Footnote 133
In addition, as indicated above, the IICISAR was established in 2011 by the Human Rights CouncilFootnote 134 with the mandate to investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law in Syria since March 2011 and to establish the facts and circumstances that may amount to such violations and of the crimes perpetrated and, where possible, to identify those individuals responsible with a view to ensuring that the perpetrators of such violations, including those that may constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes, are held accountable.Footnote 135 Both the IICISAR and the WGEID recommended to the UN Security Council the referral of the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court, considering that enforced disappearances that occurred during the conflict could amount to crimes against humanity.Footnote 136
Similarly, an International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) was established by the UN General Assembly to assist in the investigation and prosecution of persons responsible for the most serious crimes under international law committed in Syria since March 2011,Footnote 137 including of enforced disappearances. The IIIM is currently working alongside the IICISAR to enter Syria and investigate the disappeared.Footnote 138 In addition, the WGEID has actively recommended the creation of a specific UN agency charged with the issue of enforced disappearances in Syria, including to the UN Security Council.Footnote 139 In June 2023, the UN General Assembly also established the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in the Syrian Arab Republic (IIMPSAR) with the specific mandate to clarify the fate and whereabouts of all missing persons in Syria and to provide adequate support to victims, including survivors and the families of those missing.Footnote 140 The creation of this new body was welcomed by the WGEID, and their future collaboration is promising.Footnote 141
Similarly, on 23 December 2024, the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence, the WGEID, the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, the Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights, and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention all indicated that “documentation and preservation of evidence of gross violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed during years of conflict and authoritarianism are critical to ensure truth and accountability in this pivotal moment of early transition in Syria.”Footnote 142 They recalled that the prompt and thorough documentation and investigation of past and present gross human rights violations is an obligation under international law and a crucial guarantee of non-recurrence, and they called for comprehensive mapping, collection, registration, and preservation of evidence and testimonies. They indicated that investigations must be performed in line with international standards and that all concerned stakeholders must prevent the loss of vital information for the search of disappeared persons. Inaction today can affect prospects of success tomorrow. They urged caretaker authorities to establish a system for preserving mass graves, to create protocols for exhumations of gravesites, and to set and oversee the implementation of priorities for exhumations of mass gravesites that balance the needs of families to identify victims and evidentiary requirements for criminal proceedings. They also required all relevant actors to cooperate with the IICISAR, the IIIM, and the IIMPSAR.Footnote 143
Hopes are high that the work of the WGEID and the investigations carried by the IICISAR, the IIIM and the IIMPSAR on the ground in Syria, including in detention facilities, will present new opportunities to bring closure to the families whose loved ones were detained and disappeared and support the complex transition ahead, ensuring a comprehensive transitional justice process that encompasses measures in the field of truth seeking, criminal accountability, reparation for victims, memorialization, and guarantees of non-recurrence. These investigations and the continued quest for justice in Syria also present an opportunity to solidify the legal contours of torture as it pertains to enforced disappearances. The Syrian context demonstrates that the suffering experienced by both the disappeared and their loved ones often may meet the legal definition of torture under international law.
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