Human rights organizations: It is necessary to establish a framework that guarantees accountability for those responsible for violations after the fall of the Assad regime
44 Human rights organizations signed a legal paper highlighting ways to respond to human rights in Syria after the fall of the Assad regime, stressing “the necessity of establishing a comprehensive framework that guarantees transitional justice and holding those responsible for violations accountable.”
The organizations said in a joint statement: “The Syrian people have ended more than five decades of violence and oppression, putting an end to decades of dictatorship and persecution.”
The statement added: “This historic change provided the opportunity for the Syrian people to rebuild societal ties, aiming to restore dialogue, affirm the values of equality and human dignity, reshape a social contract between the various components, and promote the values of tolerance and respect for the spirit of the law in order to achieve peace and political stability.”
The statement called for “taking strict measures to protect sensitive evidence and sites that could reveal the fate of missing persons, including closing security headquarters and detention centers in areas that were under the control of the former regime, to protect forensic evidence from tampering.”
The statement stressed “the necessity of forming a temporary judicial body that includes a group of impartial judges and jurists in order to determine the responsibilities for the random release of detainees and document the cases of missing persons.”
The statement stressed “the necessity of imposing house arrest or detention on people involved in human rights violations, including military and civilian officials.”
The statement made it clear that “it is necessary for international cooperation in this context, as the organizations have called for accelerating cooperation with specialized international mechanisms such as the Neutral and Independent Mechanism.”
At the conclusion of the statement, it was emphasized “the necessity of facilitating the access of United Nations teams and humanitarian agencies to areas in need, while ensuring the freedom of Syrian organizations to work inside, facilitating access to government documents and organizing the process of collecting missing documents by citizens to hand them over to official agencies.”
