Abstract
After eight years of civil war, parts of Syria are now free from conflict. In recognition of the return to peace, the government officially welcomes back all who fled the country to escape violence. Yet, a pattern of property expropriation supported by the government during the war limits the ability of some to return and reclaim their homes and businesses. We argue here that intentional changes to law and policy regarding property rights during the war has led to asset losses for members of groups opposed to the government and created a barrier to property restitution and the return of these groups. We examine legal documents and secondary sources identifying government actions and their impact, noting the proliferation of laws that systematically erode the property rights of people who lack proximity, legal status, and regime allies. As the results of these laws manifest after the war, a disproportionate number of Syrians who opposed the government will find themselves without the houses, land, and property they held before the war began.
Highlights
The Syrian Civil War began in 2011 as part of the ‘Arab Spring’ pro-democracy uprisings that spread through the Middle East
The Counterterrorism Court (CTC) fails on all counts, is it outside of the regular Syrian criminal justice system with judges who are beholden to security services, but it gives enormous discretion in the referral of cases to judges and offers no avenues for appeal
Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict, the government has implemented almost 50 new laws in those same categories [69]. We argue that these changes in law, and others not directly related to property, have eroded the property rights of people displaced by violence in Syria
Summary
The Syrian Civil War began in 2011 as part of the ‘Arab Spring’ pro-democracy uprisings that spread through the Middle East. The chaos of war has masked the proliferation of laws which at first glance seem innocuous or unrelated to property These laws systematically undermine the property rights of people who lack proximity, legal status, and regime allies and erode the possibility for restitution. We address both the law and the bureaucratic processes that the Syrian state has used to expropriate property from its citizens during the conflict. Our goal here is to compile and contextualize these reports from the war zones and refugee camps into a coherent narrative regarding state property expropriation This is a methodology developed in wartime when more in-depth inquiry with government sources and individuals who lost property were precluded by possible harm to interview subjects and the challenge of in-country fieldwork. Our hope would be that, with the return of peace to Syria, our findings could be further nuanced and substantiated
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