Introduction
The establishment of the National Commission for Transitional Justice under Presidential Decree No. 20 on 17 May 2025 marked a prominent institutional milestone in the process of rebuilding the Syrian state, following more than a decade of conflict and systematic violations committed by the Assad regime against the Syrian people. Abdulbaset Abdullatif was appointed as its president, and Decree No. 149 was subsequently issued in August 2025, establishing a 13-member commission. The Commission enjoys legal personality and financial and administrative independence, and is mandated to uncover the truth regarding grave violations associated with the former regime, pursue accountability in coordination with relevant authorities, provide reparations, consolidate guarantees of non-recurrence, and foster reconciliation.
First: The First Year's Record: From Establishment to Initial Implementation
The first year focused on forming the work team, building the administrative structure, and developing six tracks: truth-seeking, accountability, reparations, institutional reform and guarantees of non-recurrence, reconciliation and civil peace, and the preservation of national memory.
However, the establishment of directorates was not matched by full operational readiness and field deployment. Geographic expansion continued to outpace the Commission’s operational capacity, as seen in the expansion of its presence into two governorates outside Damascus—Homs and Deir ez-Zor—while its human and technical readiness remained uneven and limited. While it opened the Deir ez-Zor branch in April 2026, it continued staffing the Homs branch through September. To secure its premises, it utilized assets allocated by other government entities, including a two-story building handed over by the Directorate of Political Affairs in Homs to the Commission in March, which required rehabilitation, staffing, and technical equipment before becoming operational.
Regarding truth-seeking, work began on massacre dossiers, including Houla, Jdeidet al-Fadl, al-Joura, al-Qusour, Tasnin, and al-Tadamon, by collecting testimonies and evidence and engaging with victims. This represents a transition toward building dossiers suitable for judicial proceedings; however, the Commission has not yet announced the total aggregate of testimonies, completed case files, or resulting referrals, which limits the ability to assess the progress of these files.
As for accountability, the Commission worked to convert testimonies and evidence into judicial files through the Accountability Directorate, which is responsible for assessing responsibilities, preparing files for referral, following up on them, and providing technical and legal support. This role was demonstrated on the ground during visits to Deir ez-Zor, Houla, Quneitra, and Daraa. In Mahin and its countryside, a joint delegation from the Commission, the public prosecution, and judges heard approximately 60 claimants and witnesses, including around 25 next-of-kin of victims. This was accompanied by filing and pursuing lawsuits against 3 individuals accused of violations in the area. This example illustrates a practical contribution to building cases and bringing judicial proceedings closer to victims, moving beyond information gathering to preparing it for judicial use.
In the area of reparations, work focused on preparing a victims' registry, recovery centers, and a proposed fund, while compensation criteria remain under development amid massive needs and limited resources that make comprehensive and swift compensation difficult. In parallel, the Commission worked to enhance coordination with other institutions, particularly the National Commission for the Missing, to link clarifying the fate of the missing with redress and accountability.
Regarding institutional reform, guarantees of non-recurrence, reconciliation, and memory preservation, work centered on formulating strategic visions, community dialogues, and documentation initiatives. However, their impact has not yet materialized, as it depends on translating them into legislative amendments and institutional practices, resolving local disputes, and safeguarding victims' narratives and violation sites. Furthermore, while engagement with victims is crucial, it requires sustainable mechanisms that allow them to influence priorities and review decisions, ensuring their participation is not confined solely to providing testimony.
In summary, the Commission made progress in establishing an institutional framework for transitional justice, but its operational readiness remained incomplete, and progress across its tracks was uneven. Its contribution to preparing judicial files appeared clearer than the announced outcomes in reparations and institutional reform. The shortcoming lies in the widening gap between developing tools and demonstrating their impact, making the priority for the upcoming phase the completion of capacities, the publication of measurable outcomes, and the transformation of engagement with victims into meaningful participation and tangible services.
Second: Priorities for the Second Year: From Expanding Activities to Achieving Measurable Results
The Commission's primary priority is finalizing the Transitional Justice Law, on which it is consulting with members of the People's Assembly. The law must clearly define the relationship between the Commission, the public prosecution, the judiciary, and the Commission for the Missing, as well as powers regarding access to archives, witness protection, victims' rights, and oversight and appeal mechanisms. This is critical for shifting inter-institutional cooperation from ad hoc arrangements that evolve during operations into well-defined jurisdictions and procedures that enable tracking case files and establishing accountability for delays.
Finalizing the law is directly linked to defining the scope of jurisdiction. While focusing on the violations of the Assad regime is understandable given their scale and systematic nature, it is insufficient to provide redress to victims of other parties. It is also necessary to clarify the relationship between addressing the regime's legacy and accountability for subsequent violations, including the events in the Coast and As-Suwayda, to prevent the proliferation of bodies and courts from leading to inconsistent standards of accountability based on the perpetrator's identity or political affiliation.
On accountability, the Commission faces a dual challenge: supporting genuine accountability for perpetrators of the most serious crimes—including mass torture, massacres, and the use of chemical weapons—while avoiding overburdening the judiciary with a volume of cases beyond its capacity, which would prolong delays and undermine public confidence in justice. Therefore, it requires a public case-prioritization policy focused on commanders and direct perpetrators of grave violations based on individual responsibility and the strength of evidence, while exploring non-penal alternatives, such as acknowledgment, reparations, and reform, for less grave cases. This requires transparent and equitable standards: a lower rank should not justify overlooking a grave crime, nor should prioritization result in dropping the responsibility of other accomplices or exempting them from accountability.
The Commission’s support for the judicial track requires rigorous attention to fair trial guarantees, from effective legal defense and protection for lawyers to enabling parties to challenge evidence, as well as publishing verdicts while safeguarding witness identities. This becomes increasingly important in multi-defendant cases and in absentia rulings, where the basis of individual responsibility must be clearly articulated. A distinction must also be made between first-instance and final rulings, and between the issuance of a judgment and its enforceability; the number of rulings alone is insufficient to measure the quality of justice, whereas legal clarity regarding crimes and forms of liability reduces disparities in judicial interpretation.
Evidence preservation remains among the most urgent priorities, as the loss of archives or tampering with detention facilities and mass graves could jeopardize opportunities for truth-seeking and accountability. This demands clear legal mandates, standardized indexing, documented chains of custody, and forensic and digital analysis capabilities. Furthermore, cooperation with the Commission for the Missing, the judiciary, and document-holding organizations requires a protocol governing data collection, access, and protection, ensuring that humanitarian tracing reports do not automatically turn into judicial proceedings that place families at risk, while upholding informed consent, confidentiality, and purpose limitation.
In reparations, the most realistic starting point is launching targeted, funded programs for the most affected groups, in parallel with establishing the fund and completing the registry. These may include survivor treatment and rehabilitation, support for families of the missing, legal aid, and the resolution of civil documentation and property rights, according to transparent and contestable criteria. The fund requires defined financing, disbursement and auditing rules, and clear beneficiary definitions, whereas assets recovered from abroad remain a prospective resource on which near-term promises of compensation cannot reliably be built. Additionally, property restitution requires coordination with the judiciary, registration authorities, and the legislature (the People's Assembly) to address conflicting decisions, records, and claims, and cannot be reduced merely to financial compensation.
The design and legitimacy of these programs depend on translating victim centrality into meaningful participation through diverse advisory committees, secure grievance channels, and the publication of consultation outcomes and the rationale for accepting or rejecting proposals. Participation should include women, survivors, persons with disabilities, and families abroad, and must not be restricted to the most prominent associations or those able to reach Damascus. Registration procedures also require disciplined alternative forms of proof and legal assistance, ensuring that requiring missing or hard-to-obtain documents does not exclude the most affected, while guaranteeing the right to appeal rejection decisions.
As for guarantees of non-recurrence, the Commission’s recommendations must be tied to trackable institutional measures, such as standardizing detention registries, oversight of detention facilities, activating complaint mechanisms, investigating torture, and reviewing legislation that facilitated arbitrary detention and property rights violations. Institutional reform requires individualized vetting of responsibility and integrity, preventing the continued influence of implicated individuals while avoiding blanket exclusion based on past affiliation. In this way, reconciliation becomes tied to addressing the root causes of violations and guaranteeing rights, rather than being used to bypass demands for accountability.
Implementing these priorities remains contingent on completing the Commission’s resources and staffing, and ensuring the capacity of its branches to deliver services. This requires transparency regarding budget size, staff allocation, and mandates, alongside practical safeguards for independence that prevent interference in case selection or obstruction of access to information. Accordingly, the benchmark for success in the second year should shift from expanding activities to the volume of restored rights, regular service delivery, and verifiable outcomes that victims can access and review.
Conclusion
The record of the first year demonstrates that the National Commission for Transitional Justice has established an institutional foundation and begun converting documentation and testimonies into files supporting accountability. However, its operational capacity has remained incomplete and even weak, and progress across its tracks has been uneven, with limited announced results in reparations, reform, and victim participation. Therefore, the primary challenge ahead lies in finalizing the legal framework and securing resources, while linking truth-seeking to accountability, redress, and guarantees of non-recurrence, and prioritizing cases according to gravity and individual responsibility. This would enable meaningful accountability without overburdening the judiciary beyond its capacity or turning prioritization into a path to impunity.
Assessing this transition requires periodic reporting detailing complaints, verified files, referrals and their outcomes, reparations beneficiaries, and implemented reform recommendations, thereby highlighting areas of progress and delay and measuring the performance of branches through their services. The Commission’s success remains tied to its capacity to deliver non-discriminatory redress, support sound accountability, and facilitate meaningful victim participation; the required impact is the transformation of institutional work into restored rights and tangible results that rebuild trust between society and the state.