Technical Meeting on Accountability and Legal Reform in Syria

A technical meeting was recently held in Amman by the IHL Centre's Middle East team, in collaboration with co-organizers from the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP), The Day After (TDA), and the Syrian Legal Development Programme (SLDP).

As the first organization to address this topic, the IHL Centre initiated discussions on developing a set of criteria to assess the State’s ability and willingness to investigate and prosecute crimes within the criminal justice system- a key step toward advancing legal and judicial reform as part of broader transitional justice processes.

The meeting brought together a group of Syrian lawyers and judges engaged in accountability and justice work. The 13 Syrian participants reached consensus on a proposed framework and began a preliminary analysis of Syrian legal and regulatory structures against the identified criteria. This meeting represents the beginning of a Syrian-led process aimed at strengthening accountability and justice through sustained technical engagement, collaboration, and local ownership.

See also here our recent publication on Pathways to justice in the transitional justice process: Accountability in the Syrian context.