Syria
The Assad regime, ousted in December 2024, left behind a long and brutal legacy of forced disappearances, torture, killings, and other atrocities spanning over more than five decades. Hundreds of thousands of people were held in prisons and secret detention sites across the country, where sexual violence was used as a tool to intimidate detainees and suppress dissent. Abuse intensified after the regime launched a ruthless crackdown on peaceful protests in 2011, which sparked a lengthy civil war.
Following the rapid fall of the regime, more than 8,000 survivors emerged from detention with severe physical and mental wounds. At least 100,000 others are still missing.
In February 2025, the Global Survivors Fund (GSF) began supporting the Association of Detainees and Missing of Sednaya Prison (ADMSP) to urgently respond to those recently released from detention centres. The emergency response, named ‘liberty pathway,’ is tailored to the most vulnerable, including women who are unable to return home due to stigma associated with detention, and those who returned to their communities to find them completely destroyed.
Survivors receive direct emergency financial payments and referrals to mental health, medical and psychosocial services in their local area. However, the consequences of the conflict leaves many challenges to overcome. Syria’s economy is in tatters, and many hospitals lack the equipment or specialists needed to address the complex trauma survivors face. In many cases, their families cannot pay for their medical treatment.
Many survivors cannot return home – they face widespread stigma, or have not found ways to communicate with their families. Others have no house to search for.
From Damascus, ADMSP is now working to map existing services and organisations on the ground. We hope to expand this project together, replicating our approach in Türkiye, where we co-created individual and collective reparative measures with survivors.
Survivors' call for Assad assets to finance reparation
In 2023, GSF conducted a Global Reparations Study with ADMSP, and Women Now for Development, to assess the landscape for reparation in Syria. Most participants said a national-led reparation programme could not even be considered as long as the Assad regime was still in power, and so recommended the creation of an international fund for Syrian survivors.
In light of this recommendation, GSF has been advocating for the establishment of an International Fund for Syrian Victims, financed in part by seized assets from the Assad regime. In light of recent developments and the shifting political landscape, we are actively reassessing the modalities of such a fund, and remain steadfast in our call for the repurposing of these assets for reparation. This call is rooted in survivors’ own demands, recognising that the return of stolen assets carries not only material value but a deep sense of accountability and justice.
