The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) expressed concern over reports about dozens of abductions and enforced disappearances in Syria during a press briefing on Friday. In his statement, spokesperson Thameen Al-Keetan stated that OHCHR documented at least 97 people missing since the ousting of former president Bashar Assad. He also stressed the obligations of all armed actors to abide by international human rights law and international humanitarian law.
The warning notes that nearly a year after the fall of the former government, dozens of new cases of abductions and disappearances are being reported, adding to the more than 100,000 people who went missing during the Assad regime, a figure documented in numerous UN reports, including from the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic.
The two phases of the 14 year-long civil war, the era of the former government and the current period of transitional authority, are both marred by the same practice of enforced disappearances. To address this crisis, the UN had established the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in the Syrian Arab Republic (IIMP), a body created by UN General Assembly resolution 77/230 in June 2023.
The statement further points to recent, emblematic cases, such as the disappearance of volunteer Hamza Al-Amarin. He worked for the Syria Civil Defense (White Helmets), a Syrian-led humanitarian organization that provides emergency services in areas affected by the conflict. In his remarks, spokesperson Thameen Al-Keetan stressed that “all armed actors – both exercising State power and otherwise – must respect and protect humanitarian workers at all times, everywhere, as required by international human rights law and applicable humanitarian law.”
The protection of humanitarian workers is enshrined in Art. 18 (2) Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions, in addition to the basic principle of distinction between combatants and non-combatants under international humanitarian law. International human rights law further relates enforced disappearances to the right to life. Not only are state and non-state actors obliged to refrain from performing them, but the state is also obliged to prevent and investigate them under positive human rights law obligations. In a wider transitional justice context, the statement asserts that clarifying the fate of the disappeared is a legal requirement and a cornerstone for sustainable peace, as outlined in the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims.
