2017

Syria’s Displaced and the Obstacles to Return

The Lemkin Reunion 4^th Meeting

Call for Participants

Shattuck Center, School of Public Policy, Central European University

February 18 – 19, 2017

To view in PDF, please click here.

“After three years struggling for the better Syria I dreamed of, I eventually was forced to leave with my family, psychologically bruised. I am not sure I can return to a Syria that now has worse human conditions than when we started in 2011, where the price of a word is death.”[1]

With the fall of Aleppo and other parts of the country to the Syrian regime, half the country’s population remains forcibly displaced internally or abroad. Wishes and questions about return and access to home arise. What are the conditions that could allow for return, and what are the threats and obstacles created by the Syrian regime and other actors that are preventing repatriation?

The Shattuck Center invites you to its fourth annual session. This year’s question is return. What constitutes return? Who are those who left? And how did they leave? What guarantees do they have for their safety? How has return been dealt with by the regime’s security arm?

To download the PDF file click here. 

The Fall of Aleppo City* (October – December 2016)

Dead End for Kerry-Lavrov Negotiations

The clouds of war started gathering after the fall of Lavrov-Kerry agreement that aimed to cease hostilities in Aleppo. The fall of the

Changes in areas of control in Aleppo City from October 1st, until December 13, 2016 Red: Government. Green: Rebels. Yellow: YPG

ceasefire agreement was followed by intensified bombing on eastern Aleppo, and periodic attacks towards western Aleppo. Blames exchanged between Russia and the United States diplomats for breaking the agreement highlighted the fragmentation and fragility of this agreement and the lack of leverage over their allies on the ground. The resumption of violence caused a mass scale damage and deterioration of living conditions in Aleppo and gave a space to armed opposition forces especially Jabhat al-Nusra to carry out further attacks.

Although rebel groups managed to break the siege in eastern Aleppo earlier in August 2016, which allowed food and ammunition to come in the eastern part, the humanitarian situation deteriorated, and the level of deprivation inflicted upon inhabitants of eastern Aleppo increased till the fall of the city in December 2016.  In continuation of the regime’s strategy “Surrender or We Wipe You Out,”[1] bids for an urgent intervention to stop the annihilation of eastern Aleppo and its people went in vain.

In an interview with Australian national radio, Aleppo Project fellow AlHakam Shaar said the return of resident displaced from the city is an important condition for a successful reconstruction of Aleppo.

Images showing recent severe destruction in Raqqa, following the expulsion of the Islamic state bring to memory the severe destruction Homs and Aleppo faced and still face. The defeat of the Islamic State in Raqqa brings the conflict in Syria closer to an end, but this on its own is not enough. The end of the fight in Raqqa and Deir Azzor marks the end of intense fights in these cities. Without a process of reconciliation, sustainable peace building, and inclusion, these cities would suffer from a permanent division, not only in terms of the physical structure but also in terms of its demography.

Courtesy of Omar AlJaloud

In 2015, The Aleppo Project interviewed Omar AlJaloud, who was part of a volunteer group providing Syrian children in Turkey with educational training that would provide them with novel tools of expression and expose them to different perspectives. Since this group of volunteers specializes in Architecture, they wanted to conduct their training in a simplified way to the children in order to get their perspective on the future of Syria after the war. The students were Syrians from different backgrounds in Mersin. For five months, the class met weekly to learn the basics of architecture, design and drawing. By the end of these sessions, children were required to submit designs of their own imagined buildings.