Syria has begun to build its transitional justice framework, establishing by decree a Commission for Transitional Justice and a Commission for the Missing. These steps mark an important starting point, and reparations will play a central role, both in addressing harm and in showing how the state intends to respond to victims and their families. Yet, to contribute to restore trust, the new state needs to carefully design its reparation program with a clear, accessible and fair process, one that prioritizes the survivors’ needs.
Several practical issues will require attention: transparency in decision making, clear and inclusive eligibility criteria, sufficient administrative and technical capacity to support those who have suffered traumatic experiences, and meaningful access for Syrians living in remote areas or abroad. It will be crucial to consult with the affected communities, including survivors of grave violations, and with the civil society organizations which support them.
For all these, Syria could look to neighbouring Iraq for lessons. Syria’s transitional justice remains at an early stage, with limited transparency and limited consultation with survivors. Iraqis have suffered decades of atrocities committed by the state and by non-state armed groups. And unlike Syria, Iraq has already implemented several reparations programs, for survivors of terror-related crimes, military wrongdoings, ISIS captivity, and crimes committed by Saddam Hussein’s former regime.
As we witnessed in Iraq, the success of reparations programs can be measured not only by their outcomes and numbers, but also by the survivors’ experiences during the application and the implementation processes. By focusing on the wording and the implementation of the Yazidi [Female] Survivors’ Law (YSL), a reparations program adopted in Iraq following the ISIS genocide against the Yazidi community, we can draw lessons for Syria.
A survivor-centred law
The passage of the YSL was a remarkable achievement, as it is the first reparations law in response to gender-based violence in Iraq and the Middle East region. It focuses on survivors of abduction, physical, psychological, sexual and gender-based violence, and mass killings. It covers not only Yazidi women and girls, but also Yazidi boys who were abducted as minors, as well as women and girls from the Shabak, Turkmen, and Christian communities who were also abducted. Finally, the law applies to male and female victims from all these four communities who have survived mass execution.
Individual reparations under the YSL include a monthly financial compensation, a plot of land, access to mental health services and education opportunities. It also recognises the crimes committed against these communities, including genocide, and requires the Iraqi state to look for the missing and exhume all remaining mass graves.
The YSL has established an administrative reparations scheme, implemented by the General Directorate for Survivors’ Affairs (GDSA) under the Iraqi ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. It has created an eight-member committee to adjudicate applications and hear first-level appeals, with the capacity to interview survivors at its discretion.
The process initially included minimal procedures and a flexible evidentiary standard so that survivors could access reparations outside of judicial proceedings. Based on the administrative nature of the program, survivors could provide any evidence available, and were not required to file a criminal complaint to access reparations. The law also included confidentiality provisions, prohibiting the GDSA and other government agencies from unauthorized sharing of survivors’ information.
As many female Yazidi survivors had already shared their stories repeatedly with journalists, NGOs and investigators, their statements taken by these well-known entities were considered as strong evidence that would enable survivors to access reparations without going through yet an additional interview. And while most survivors remained displaced in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, applications required travel to GDSA offices in Mosul or a satellite office later established in Sinjar. An online portal was introduced, allowing survivors to apply from within Iraq and from abroad.
The YSL program’s achievements
The GDSA does not publish information on the number of applicants, appeals, or rejected claims, but, as of today, it has reported that the Committee has approved 2,496 individuals as survivors receiving monthly financial compensation. In addition, the GDSA has worked with NGOs to provide mental health services, while the government establishes a specialized centre in Sinjar. It is also working to provide access to education for survivors whose schooling was disrupted, and prioritization in public sector employment. Finally, the first phase of land distributions has taken place with 262 residential land titles issued to survivors. The YSL also mandates memorialization measures, searching for missing persons, opening mass graves, and supporting evidence collection and justice efforts.
These achievements are significant and require coordination with various other government federal and provincial agencies. The financial compensations were truly transformative for survivors and allowed them to rebuild their lives, and sometimes leave displacement camps, after a decade of living in precarious conditions. For many, it was the first time the harm they had suffered, individually and collectively, was recognised by the Iraqi state.
At the same time, the process was often difficult for survivors who had already endured severe trauma and frequently faced exposure and stigma within their communities. This matters because the purpose of reparations is not only to provide redress for atrocities, but also to repair the relationship between the state and its citizens, and for survivors to feel that the harm they have suffered is recognised and will not be repeated. The YSL has introduced a new reparations framework, but weaknesses in its drafting and its implementation have limited access and undermined its survivor-centred approach.
The ambiguity of the law’s wording
The drafting of the YSL has led to three core issues which created major difficulties for some survivors.
First, the law was drafted to respond to the crimes perpetrated against Yazidi women and girls, and understandably so, given the number of victims, the gravity of the harm and ISIS genocidal campaign against the Yazidi community. However, women and girls from the Shabak, Turkmen, and Christian communities were also included in the law. To qualify for reparations under the YSL, applicants had to prove that ISIS abducted them on or after August 3, 2014, the date on which ISIS attacked towns and villages throughout the Yazidi homeland of Sinjar in the Ninewa Plains.
But ISIS had attacked the other communities before that date. As a result, these survivors had to establish that they were still held captive as of August 3 to qualify. So a Turkmen, Shabak or Christian woman who was captured and subsequently released before August 3, could not qualify for reparations, regardless of the harm she faced. For these communities that have faced different patterns of being targeted, a key term that remain undefined is “kidnapping”, which can lead to different interpretations about whether someone was taken by ISIS.
Another challenge was determining which harms needed to be established to qualify for reparations under Article 1 of the YSL, which includes kidnapping, sexual violence, family separation, forced religious conversion, and physical and psychological harm. Given the widespread understanding that many female Yazidi survivors had experienced sexual violence, applicants were often expected to provide evidence of multiple harms. Although the law does not require proof of rape, this question arose repeatedly during the application process, particularly for younger applicants. Pressuring women to disclose rape was both traumatizing and stigmatising.
Finally, there was confusion about which girls from the Shabak, Christian, and Turkmen communities qualified. The YSL uses several terms to describe eligible female survivors, including “women”, “children”, and “adolescent girls”. While Yazidi children are explicitly included, the law refers to survivors from the other communities as “adolescent girls”. This difference in wording effectively excluded girls under 16 from Shabak, Turkmen, and Christian communities, although they have suffered the same harms as the other children. Since the law does not define these terms, it leaves interpretation to the Committee responsible for reviewing applications. In practice, the Committee applied the most restrictive interpretation of these terms, excluding girls from the Shabak, Christian, and Turkmen communities. As a result, some young girls went through the difficult process only to learn that they were not eligible.
The law also has procedural gaps. For example, when the Committee rejects an application for reparations, the GDSA does not consistently issue a written decision setting out the date of the decision and the reasons for rejection. The absence of this information creates practical barriers for survivors seeking to appeal, whether before the Committee or, as a last resort, before the Court of First Instance. While some survivors have requested and received written decisions, this is not consistent, and verbal explanations provided by phone may be incomplete or misunderstood. Appeals must be filed within 30 days, and without clear reasons for rejection, survivors are at a disadvantage in preparing an effective appeal.
The additional requirement of a criminal investigation
The program suffered a significant setback two months into implementation when the Committee required all applicants to prove that they had filed a criminal case in the location of their abduction and that the investigation had been concluded. This applied regardless of whether survivors knew the perpetrators’ identities or whether the perpetrators were in Iraq, arrested or not, dead or alive. Although it was optional under the YSL, the former Committee chair made this requirement mandatory as a safeguard against fraud, effectively altering the administrative nature of the reparations program.
Practically speaking, to file a criminal complaint, every survivor had to engage with the multiple government actors in the criminal justice process. That included the police, judicial investigators, security and intelligence officers, all of whom were authorized to conduct their own interviews as they deemed appropriate and each one could affect the outcome of the survivor’s case by holding up the process or issuing a negative finding.
As criminal investigations are conducted in-person, survivors had to return to the actual location where ISIS had abducted them to be interviewed by the police and an investigative judge. These procedures required survivors to return to areas that triggered their trauma and where they felt insecure because of the potential presence of ISIS members and supporters.
During interviews, survivors also had to submit to a new array of questions about sexual violence, with no training for how to handle the sensitive nature of the issue. As part of the investigation process, government officials, notably police and investigative judges, sometimes asked the questions in courtrooms in the presence of public and government employees, sometimes with open doors, or in the presence of lawyers working on other cases. This exposed survivors to stigma, re-traumatisation, and the risk of family and community harm.
Iraq’s criminal investigation process required survivors to present two witnesses who could testify that they had been abducted or seen in captivity. By making this mandatory, the law’s confidentiality provisions were undermined with survivors forced to involve others in corroborating their claims. Over time, survivors were told that witnesses also had to be “approved” by the Committee, further limiting who could qualify.
This was a particular challenge for survivors from smaller communities and for those in exile, as such witnesses were often unavailable. Survivors who had already been approved by the committee, filed their complaints and given their testimony, had to return to courts and police stations, and testify again for others, forcing them to revisit traumatic experiences. Survivors also faced significant travel, additional cost, and logistical burdens, and more importantly, faced distress and uncertainty with an ever-changing process, new requirements and a lack of transparency. Those in Iraq often had to travel multiple times from camps in the Kurdistan Region to Mosul or Sinjar at their own expense, to bring their children to file separate cases. Others returned from abroad, including Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States, at great cost.
While the requirement to file a criminal complaint was never lifted, more than three years after the adoption of the law, the GDSA started a pilot program allowing survivors living abroad to apply through Iraqi embassies in several European countries, significantly reducing financial, logistical and psychological barriers. This remote application system was an essential step to ensure reparations would be accessible to more survivors.
Lessons for the future Syrian reparations program
International standards require reparations to be adequate, effective, and timely, without causing stigma or further harm, and to be delivered through survivor-centred, accessible processes with clear information and legal assistance. The experience of implementing the YSL highlights several lessons that may be relevant for policymakers and civil society actors in Syria as they consider future reparations mechanisms.
- Draft the law clearly and define eligibility with precision. It should state who qualifies, which crimes are covered, and what evidence is required to access benefits, rather than leaving key terms open to interpretation.
- Make eligibility decisions transparent and consultative. Syrians who apply for reparations and are rejected should be given information about the reasons for the denial in writing with clear information about deadlines and where to appeal.
- An administrative reparations program is more likely to deliver survivor-centred outcomes in contexts of large-scale atrocities and limited resources. Criminal accountability processes often require higher standards of proof and involve lengthy, complex procedures that place greater burdens on individuals. While criminal accountability remains important, it should be separate from administrative reparations and should never be a requirement for accessing benefits.
- Adopt flexible evidentiary standards and trauma-informed procedures. Survivors often lack documentary evidence, so programs should accept a broad range of credible evidence, including survivor testimony. Adjudicators should be trained to engage with survivors and to conduct interviews to gather necessary information in a sensitive manner. Procedures should protect privacy and confidentiality, avoid unnecessary probing into details of harm, and take into account factors such as gender, including by recruiting and training female staff. All processes should prioritize the physical and psychological safety of survivors.
- Ensure the program is accessible to Syrians across the country and abroad, including those living far from Damascus. This can include online application processes, satellite offices, and coordination with embassies, while recognizing that not all Syrians will be able or willing to rely on embassy services, particularly those with refugee or asylum status or those who continue to distrust government institutions.
- Establish independent oversight and appeal mechanisms so that decisions can be reviewed fairly and without bias by an independent authority.
- Governments should work closely with civil society organizations, both for technical expertise and to deliver services to survivors, including mental health support and legal assistance.
Ultimately, reparations programs must demonstrate that the state is committed, not only to acknowledging past harm, but also to restoring trust between the state and its citizens and preventing recurrence of atrocities. The Syria program will be most likely to achieve this if it is designed in a way that is survivor-centred and trauma-informed, non-adversarial, and responsive to the realities survivors confront.
Mustafa Haid is a Syrian human rights advocate, senior advisor, and writer with over 15 years of experience working on transitional justice, accountability, civil society, and gender mainstreaming in Syria and beyond. He is the founder of the Dawlaty organization and holds a Master’s degree in Conflict Resolution from King’s College London.
Zoé Paris is a jurist with expertise in international law and transitional justice. She has worked with grassroots organizations in Iraq, France and Palestine through advocacy, documentation and strategic litigation. In Iraq, she has focused on advocacy around transitional justice, access to reparations under the Yazidi Survivors’ Law, and ethical engagement with survivors of ISIS crime.
Sherizaan Minwalla is a human rights lawyer with expertise in Iraq, focused on human rights and access to justice. Since 2014, she has worked closely with survivors of ISIS crimes. She has contributed to the design and the implementation of the Yazidi Survivors’ Law and has researched the impact of incorporating criminal investigations into the administrative reparations process.
