Every day, evidence is mounting of systematic human rights violations being committed in Syria’s brutal civil war. Over 100,000 people have died since fighting began in March 2011. On August 21, a chemical weapons attack near Damascus killed hundreds of civilians, including scores of children, renewing demands for an end to the conflict and for perpetrators of mass crimes to be held accountable.
A newly adopted UN Security Council resolution calls on the Syrian government to cooperate in destroying its chemical weapons arsenal, stressing that “those responsible for any use of chemical weapons must be held accountable.” Yet, it does not provide a framework for pursuing accountability, in the short or long term.
What role might transitional justice play in a post-conflict Syria? Should Syria rush to prosecute war criminals once the fighting draws to a close?
These are some of the pressing questions explored in ICTJ’s newest briefing paper, Towards a Transitional Justice Strategy for Syria, which looks ahead to an eventual resolution to the war and the need for a credible approach to accountability and human rights in a post-conflict Syria.
The briefing recognizes that, one day, Syrian authorities and civil society, as well as the international community, will have to consider how to deal with crimes committed during this conflict—and those that took place in preceding decades of repression under Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez al-Assad.
ICTJ’s briefing paper emphasizes that, rather than rushing into a particular set of transitional justice procedures or mechanisms, what is likely to be of more value in Syria is a comprehensive process of planned assessment and consultation to provide recommendations for specific measures.
ICTJ urges five key considerations, including the need for national ownership of the process, a comprehensive transitional justice strategy, and tempering expectations for quick results.
“Syria will continue to face a monumental humanitarian crisis where the first order of business will be ensuring food, shelter, medicine, and the return of millions of displaced persons. In this challenging context, creating unrealistic expectations for the timeliness of accountability measures will only exacerbate disappointment when these are not met,” says the report.
Drawing on past experiences of missed opportunities for transitional justice in post-conflict environments, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, the briefing envisions probable scenarios and establishes a criterion for embarking on justice measures.
“The political minimum requirement for a credible approach to accountability and human rights has to be that the government of the day is committed to those principles and is not actively violating them. From a social perspective there is little value in talking about accountability for past crimes if repression and political violence persist and existence from day to day is in the balance.”
PHOTO: A Syrian internally displaced mother comforts her baby at an abandoned land where she and her family have taken shelter after fleeing their village that turned into a battlefield between government forces and Free Syrian Army fighters in Idlib province, northern Syria, on September 22, 2013. (AP Photo)
