Country Info

Human Rights Watch 16 May 2013 Government security branches in Raqqa city hold documents and potential physical evidence indicating that detainees were arbitrarily detained and tortured there while the city was under government control. Human Rights Watch researchers visited the State Security and Military Intelligence facilities in Raqqa, now under the de facto control of [...]

United States Department of State 19 April 2013 Summary Syria is a republic ruled by the authoritarian regime of President Bashar al-Asad. The president makes key decisions with counsel from a small number of security advisors, ministers, and senior members of the ruling Baath (Arab Socialist Renaissance) Party. The constitution mandates the primacy of Baath [...]

IRIN 21st November 2012 Winter is approaching fast for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, who are facing night-time temperatures that regularly dip below zero.  The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and local NGO partners have started preparing, but things are going slowly amid worries about the lack of shelter and heating for the current 110,000 Syrian refugees [...]

Amnesty International Annual Report 2012: the state of the world’s human rights Syria Published 24 May 2012 Government forces used lethal and other excessive force against peaceful protesters who took to the streets in unprecedented numbers to demand political reform and the fall of the regime. The pattern and scale of state abuses may have [...]

Human Rights Watch 25 March 2012 Syrian government forces have endangered local residents by forcing them to march in front of the army during recent arrest operations, troop movements, and attacks on towns and villages in northern Syria. Witnesses from the towns of al-Janoudyah, Kafr Nabl, Kafr Rouma, and Ayn Larouz in the Idlib governorate [...]

RefWorld 21 March 2012 According to the Syrian Red Crescent (SRCS), over 200,000 people have become internally displaced since the Syrian uprisings which started in April 2011. However, accurate figures on internal displacement are increasingly difficult to ascertain due to government imposed restrictions preventing international agencies from reaching displaced populations.  The humanitarian situation for IDPs [...]

Edward Yeranian, Voice of America News 17 March 2012 Powerful explosions hit several important government security complexes in the Syrian capital, Damascus, Saturday, killing at least 27 people and wounding nearly 100 others. The Syrian government is calling the blasts “terrorist attacks” that may be linked to year-long protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while al-Arabiya [...]

Human Rights Watch 3 February 2012 Syrian army and security officers have detained and tortured children with impunity during the past year, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch has documented at least 12 cases of children detained under inhumane conditions and tortured, as well as children shot while in their homes or on [...]

Human Rights Watch World Report 2012 – Syria.  Published on 22 January 2012 and available at Human Rights Watch in English, Arabic, Hebrew and French. Syria, a repressive police state ruled under an emergency law since 1963, did not prove immune in 2011 to the pro-democracy Arab Spring movements. Anti-government protests erupted in the southern [...]

IRIN news 6 October 2011 Six months into pro-democracy protests in Syria, allegations of human rights abuses perpetrated by supporters of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime proliferate. Human rights organizations have documented numerous cases of torture in the six months since the start of the uprising, which was triggered by the torture of children: 15 boys, [...]