Fahad.Hasan-Deir Ezzor
When a person is uprooted from the people he/she loves, isolation and loneliness would be the most daunting thing to be experienced. However, such feelings not limited to him/her, but also, they may surround his/her loved ones due to this absence. This would affect various aspect of their lives. A chain of difficulties starts along with disappearance and ends only with the return of their deceased or at least knowing his/her fate even if it is death.
When is my dad coming back?
This question, which has always been heard by Abdullah’s mother from her son, asking about his father, who has been detained for five years. She always tries to escape the answer as his constant insistence ends only with the only answer she has for her son, “Pray for him to come back soon”.
“After my husband’s disappearance, my tasks became double, especially in light of the bad economic situation in the region” said Um Abdullah,a 38-year-old mother, whose husband was arrested several months after she gave birth.
“Three of my children go to school. My youngest son has to be left at my neighbor’s house until his brothers come back from school so that I can go to work that starts in the early hours of the morning and ends before sunset. I am often nervous and confused in my work, which is my only resource of living because I have a constant sense of default towards raising my children who feel lonely, isolated and lost” said Um Abdullah describing the difficulties she faces in securing a living and raising children on her own.
Um Abdullah is striving to find out where her husband was arrested, which exposed her to many extortions from people who tried to exploit her need to get any news about her husband or to have contact with him, adding: “I have not found any help from the people of the area where I live because I am displaced and strange, and I hate these weird looks at me and my children.”
Men are Missing, Women and Children are Struggling
Um Mohammed, a 40-year-old mother of three children, the oldest of whom is 15-year-old, whose husband was arrested about two years ago, talks about her suffering after her husband’s disappearance: “We are displaced and have no relatives. All of them left the country and my husband was the sole breadwinner of my family. As he was arrested, my eldest son had to leave his school to work and bear the burden of the whole household.”
Um Mohammed is trying to find a job to help her son, who has to pay almost half of his wages for transportation to reach his distant workplace, according to Um Mohammed. However, she has not had any chance to get a job as she has no education background. “The people of the area where we live help us pay rent for our house, secure some basics and provide heating, but I see looks of pity towards me and my children constantly.”
When Disappearance is More Cruel Than Death
Three years ago, 51-year-old Sanna, a pseudonym, has been looking for her four sons, who had been arrested in one day. All of her attempts to find out their fate were in vain, commenting that “their disappearance is more severe than their death, they are now neither alive nor dead.”
The situation of these women is no different from that of the families of the missing, whose numbers are high according to the International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP) after ten years of the Syrian conflict[1]. Regardless of the parties committing arbitrary arrests and preventing the families of these forcibly disappeared from knowing the causes, places of detention or even their fate, they demand that they have centres or committees in each area to document the disappearances and try to collect information about them and know the actions taken against them, or even their fate, so these families not to be exposed to exploitation or extortion.
Implications of Enforced Disappearances on Education
Saad, a 17-year-old , from Hawi Al Hisan, west of Deir Ezzor, talks about the arrest of his father and brother since 2016. “My father and brother went to settle the situation of my brother, who was a policeman in Hasaka governorate in 2016, where our village was under the control of ISIS, who arrested them. We heard no news about them, except for some unconfirmed news about their execution. This was reflected on me and my brothers, as we had to leave education and go to work to secure the lowest livelihood level for our family.”
In an interview with an education official in Deir Ezzor, who requested not to publish his name, he told us that the percentage of school dropouts ranges from 15 to 20 students from each school, at least five of whom have no breadwinner to support them. This forced them to work and leave education and consequently causes an increase in the level of drop-out of children from school.
Efforts and Procedures to Document Missing Persons
Documenting the cases of missing persons requires thorough and comprehensive research procedures by tracking all the evidence that reaches the finer details, through meetings with the families and relatives of the missing, listening to all the information received and tracking the effects of their loss, whether social or economic.
“Finding missing persons from the Syrian conflict requires a long-term, coordinated effort,” said ICMP Director-General Kathryne Bomberger[2].
The International Commission on Missing Persons has thus called for a coordinated plan to find the missing and address this key human rights issue.
Media Campaigns and Programmes to Deliver the Voices of Missing Persons
Numerous media campaigns were made by local organizations and institutions to communicate the voices of families of missing persons through social media, humanitarian institutions and international committees working on the files of missing persons, through cultural events and civil sit-ins showing the deteriorating humanitarian situation that has afflicted these families and their children.
The Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) has been working on the file of missing persons across Syria and focuses in particular on revealing the fate of those missing in the northeast due to the international coalition raids.
According to SJAC, relative stability in northern and eastern Syria allows for in-depth investigations, which cannot currently be conducted in most parts of Syria, and the program consists of three main areas[3]:
- Investigating mass graves
- Documenting and analyzing cases of missing persons
- Elevating the voices of families of the missing
Enforced Disappearances is a Violation of Human Rights
“Since 1980, the massacres have not stopped, and the prisons of the Syrian authorities have been full of thousands of opponents and prisoners of conscience. These violations have increased since the beginning of the Syrian revolution with arbitrary arrests by various parties to the conflict that have rolled over the region, where many young people, children, men were forcibly disappeared, even women have not been spared,” according to a human rights activist who requested not to publish his name for security reasons.
The United Nations General Assembly adopted an international convention in 2006 to protect people from enforced disappearance[4], which provides for the protection of all persons from enforced disappearance, that no person may be subjected to enforced disappearance, and no exceptional circumstances, whether in relation to a state of war, the threat of war, internal political instability or any other exception, may be invoked to justify enforced disappearance, which came into force in 2010.
Amnesty International also said that the International Convention to Protect All Persons from Enforced Disappearances aims to prevent enforced disappearances, reveal details of what has happened, ensure justice for survivors, victims and their families, reveal the truth and receive appropriate compensation[5].
Luciano Hazan, head of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, also told the Human Rights Council in Geneva that “the international community must not be neutral in the face of such suffering, but it must strengthen cooperation efforts, increase assistance to victim and pursue investigations and prosecutions at the local and international levels[6]“.
[1] The International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP), March 2021
[2] Ibid
[3] The Missing Persons Program – The Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC)
https://syriaaccountability.org/missing-persons/
[4] International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CED/Pages/ConventionCED.aspx
[5] Enforced Disappearance, The Amnesty International.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/enforced-disappearances/
[6] The world must not be ‘neutral’ on enforced disappearances, UN News, September 2020.
