Over 13 years of conflict, millions of Syrians have endured Housing, Land, and Property (HLP) rights violations. The Assad regime orchestrated the most systematic abuses through laws, demolitions, confiscations and forced displacement. These abuses, rooted in structural discrimination, have disproportionately harmed women, detainees’ families, and marginalized communities. HLP violations obstruct refugee return, reconciliation, and sustainable peace, yet they have largely been treated as technical or humanitarian issues rather than justice concerns. PAX adopts a victim-centered transitional justice approach, enabling affected communities to document violations, analyze impacts, and influence decision-makers. Together with partners, victims, and experts, PAX has circulated widely recognized reports, highlighted the intersectional nature of violations, and continues to press national and international actors to prioritize HLP rights as a foundation for justice and rebuilding Syria.
Secure HLP Rights for peace
What is the problem?
Millions of Syrians have become victims to Housing, Land, and Property rights violations over the past 12 years of conflict. Many HLP rights violations took place within the larger context of large-scale and systematic crimes such as forced population transfers, detention and enforced disappearance and attacks on civilian infrastructure. The Assad regime is responsible for the most systematic and large scale HLP rights violations as they deployed a vast legal and bureaucratic arsenal to displace communities, demolish neighborhoods, loot properties, confiscate land, and reassign ownership. All other conflict parties have also committed HLP rights violations. As HLP violations in the Syrian context often intersect with or are exacerbated by other human rights violations and structural discrimination predating the conflict, women, victims of detention and enforced disappearance and various community groups have been disproportionally affected.
Reclaiming What Was Taken
The Struggle for HLP rights in Post-Assad Syria
Our stance
HLP rights violations represent a significant barrier to sustainable peace and justice in Syria, an obstacle to refugee returns, and a likely root cause for future cycles of conflict. So far, HLP rights in the Syrian context have been mainly addressed as a humanitarian or technical issue. However, a victims’ centered transitional justice approach is needed to acknowledge violations that have been committed and design credible mechanisms for restitution, compensation and reconciliation.
What we do
PAX has adopted a transitional justice approach to addressing HLP rights violations by ensuring that victims are placed at the center of the work to address violations they have been subjected to. Together with partners, we have equipped victims and affected communities with knowledge and skills to use participatory tools and mechanisms to contribute to documentation and analysis of violations and formulate agendas to influence decision makers.
Over the past years, PAX, together with victims and affected communities, partners and experts, has analyzed how strategies including sieges, forced displacement, demographic engineering or passing new legislations have resulted in HLP rights violations. We proceeded to document HLP rights violations and their impact on communities and developed knowledge on the intersectional nature of these violations with other human rights violations in the Syrian context. Today, following the fall of the Assad Regime, we continue to monitor how these violations and injustices are addressed by the transitional authorities.
Together with partners, victims and affected communities, we build strategies to Influence relevant national and international stakeholders to respond to these violations.
Latest news
A victims’ centered approach
On January 2022 PAX and partners launch a project to promote a victims’ centered approach to HLP violations in Syria with the financial support of DRL. Partners produced participatory knowledge about HLP rights violations, their impact on specific communities and groups of victims and the intersectionality of different layers of violations with HLP rights violations.
- Women Now for Development conducted a research of the gender impacts of HLP rights violations
- PEL-Civil Waves conducted a research on HLP rights violations in Afrin after 2018
- PEL-Civil Waves conducted a research on the impact of the earthquake in Jindires
- PEL-Civil Waves conducted a research on HLP rights violations in Ras Al Ayn and Tel Abyad after 2019
Timeline
Review the history of our work on Housing Land and Property rights
Partners
Contact
Benoîte Martin, Syria Country Lead