- What tools are intended to help you complete the project, and what are your motivations?
- How will these testimonies and collected evidence be practically employed at both the international and local levels to prosecute those responsible and achieve justice for the victims?
- What are the most significant logistical and field difficulties you face in collecting testimonies inside and outside Syria, and how do you call on human rights organizations and bodies for support?
- What are the next steps that the Christian community in Syria expects after the completion of this human rights record to ensure the restoration of rights and redress of harm?
Damascus, Syria – Sally Obeid, a founding member of the Syrian Christian Congress, announced the imminent launch of a comprehensive and unprecedented project to document all violations against Christians in Syria since the outbreak of the crisis in 2011. This significant human rights initiative aims to preserve the rights of the Christian community, establish a legal framework, and provide redress for victims after years of conflict and marginalization.
In an exclusive interview with “Voice of Emirates” Obaid explained the reasons behind launching this comprehensive documentation project at this particular time, emphasizing that the decline in the efficiency and impartiality of institutional frameworks guaranteeing community rights makes building independent and sustainable human rights frameworks an urgent necessity. To delve deeper into the situation, what were the primary motivations that led the “Syrian Christian Congress” to launch this comprehensive documentation project at this specific juncture, after so many years of crisis?
When societies experience a decline in the effectiveness or impartiality of institutional frameworks guaranteeing their rights, the need to build independent and sustainable human rights frameworks becomes a necessity, not an option. The launch of this project came in response to a complex legal and political reality, where years of conflict, accompanied by violations, displacement, and a decline in political and institutional representation, have deepened the sense of marginalization felt by large segments of Syrian Christians. There comes a pivotal moment in the history of societies when they cease waiting for others to speak on their behalf and begin to articulate their realities through documentation and facts. Today, the contours of Syria’s future are being drawn, and the absence of documentation means the absence of facts, and the absence of facts means exclusion from the equations of rights, reparations, and justice.
Christians in Syria are not documenting their experiences to complain, but to prevent their history and geography from being written by others, and to ensure their suffering is not reduced to “collateral damage” to be forgotten with the first political settlement. Therefore, this project aims to preserve the truth, establish a legal narrative, and guarantee that the rights of victims are not lost amidst the flurry of political changes.
What tools are intended to help you complete the project, and what are your motivations?
The project relies on an integrated documentation system that conforms to international standards adopted in United Nations literature, and is based on three main pillars:
- Technical tools and evidence management: Adopting strict protocols for collecting statements and data, and implementing a “chain of possession” system to ensure the safety of evidence and protect it from any tampering.
- Rights-based methodology: Applying a victim- and survivor-centered documentation methodology that ensures respect for their dignity and protection.
- Institutional structure: Integration between field committees inside Syria and legal and human rights expertise in the diaspora.
The main motivation is to move from individual and random human rights work to a sustainable institutional model that is subject to the principles of transparency and accountability.
Emotion is not a valid argument in international courts; emotions are like poetry, but evidence is like judgments. Our goal is to transform oral histories of tragedy into documented legal evidence, moving from simply talking about violations to being able to prove them according to international standards. Given the concerns of victims and their families for their safety, what guarantees and technical and legal mechanisms does the project employ to ensure the complete confidentiality of the information and testimonies provided?
The project is based on an absolute commitment to the internationally recognized principle of “do no harm,” and relies on a set of security and legal measures, most notably:
- Sharing any data or statements with any party is prohibited except with the explicit written consent of its owner.
- Using advanced encryption techniques to protect data, with clear policies for retaining or destroying it according to specific security protocols.
- The complete technical and organizational separation between witness identities and documentary databases.
A victim who trusts us places their life in our hands; therefore, protecting witnesses and survivors takes precedence over all other considerations. Testimony is legally admissible without revealing the identity of the person who gave it, because trust is not just a slogan, but a comprehensive system of technical and legal protection.
How will these testimonies and collected evidence be practically employed at both the international and local levels to prosecute those responsible and achieve justice for the victims?
The project does not aim to create an archive of grievances, but rather to prepare legal files that can be used in the pursuit of justice and accountability.
At the international level: The findings will be referred to UN mechanisms, special rapporteurs, governmental and non-governmental human rights bodies, as well as the competent judicial authorities, in order to increase the cost of impunity.
At the local level: An independent human rights record will be established that can be presented in the future to any independent national judicial bodies or commissions of inquiry, to serve as a reference for restoring rights and property, and preventing violations from being overlooked under any political settlements.
Rights do not expire with time, and the goal is not to elicit sympathy, but to establish accountability and close the door to impunity.
What are the most significant logistical and field difficulties you face in collecting testimonies inside and outside Syria, and how do you call on human rights organizations and bodies for support?
The project faces significant challenges, primarily the security situation inside Syria, witnesses’ fear of reprisals, the geographical fragmentation of Syrian society, and the difficulty of reaching victims and survivors. We operate in an environment where victims fear their own voices more than perpetrators fear their crimes; therefore, the challenge lies not only in collecting testimonies but also in protecting and securing them.
Therefore, Congress extends an open invitation to human rights organizations and independent civic networks to provide support through:
- Sharing experiences in documenting violations and managing evidence of crimes.
- Providing technical support for the development of data protection systems.
- Coordination to provide safe environments that protect witnesses and safeguard the documentation process from intimidation or politicization.
We do not need statements of solidarity that are merely constructive, but rather professional partnerships that protect the truth and ensure the integrity of the evidence.
What are the next steps that the Christian community in Syria expects after the completion of this human rights record to ensure the restoration of rights and redress of harm?
The human rights record represents the starting point for a new phase of legal and human rights work, not the end of the project.
The next steps include:
- Preparing recommendations for policies to redress individual and collective harm.
- Identifying violations of real estate and economic property rights in preparation for demanding their return through legal frameworks.
- Providing legal input that contributes to establishing the principles of state neutrality, equal citizenship, and criminalizing discrimination and demographic cleansing in any future constitutional framework.
True reconciliation is not based on ignoring violations, but on justice and the rule of law. Therefore, systematic documentation is not aimed at revenge, but at preserving the truth, providing justice for victims, preventing a recurrence of the tragedy, and contributing to building a Syrian state based on equal citizenship, respect for pluralism, and the rule of law.
