The Bar Association forms a committee to represent the families of the victims of arrest, disappearance and murder

 The Syrian Bar Association announced the formation of a  specialized committee to follow up and represent the families of victims of arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and extrajudicial killings, in an initiative it described as a "professional and moral duty" that falls within its responsibility to preserve human dignity and protect the right to life, liberty and personal safety.

In a statement published on its Facebook page on Monday (May 4th), the syndicate confirmed  that the representation of the families "will be done under a free power of attorney, in an attempt to lift the legal burdens on families who have been exhausted by years of searching for the truth."

The syndicate's statement, published on its official Facebook page, explicitly described the scale of violations witnessed in the country over the past decades, especially since 2011, as the statement spoke of a widespread and systematic pattern of arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance, and extrajudicial killings, and the resulting loss of hundreds of thousands of people whose fate is still unknown.

 The Syndicate pointed out that this reality constitutes an ongoing violation of human rights, and that the absence of the truth compounds the pain and deepens the rift within society.

The statement did not limit itself to describing the violations, but also touched on the social and psychological impact of the loss of people, noting that the suffering of families is no less cruel than the fate of the victims themselves, and that the right to know the truth is both an individual and a collective right, and represents one of the main pillars of transitional justice, accountability, reparation and the achievement of civil peace.

The Syndicate stressed that any serious treatment of this file cannot be carried out without the cooperation of state institutions and concerned bodies, foremost of which are the Ministry of Justice, the Transitional Justice Commission and the Commission for Missing Persons, calling for "providing the committee with the available information and providing legal support to the families in a professional and humanitarian spirit."

An integrated project for the National Authority for Missing Persons

On February 18, 2026, the National Commission for Missing Persons in Syria announced the start of work on preparing a comprehensive guide and map for the actors in the file of missing persons and forcibly disappeared, in a step that is the first of its kind at the level of institutional organization of this complex file.

In a statement, the Authority indicated that this initiative comes as an attempt to develop a clear national framework that controls the roles of the actors and prevents the dispersion or conflict of efforts, in order to build a more harmonious and effective path in dealing with the needs of families and victims.

 The  Authority considered that the preparation of this guide constitutes a necessary entry point to coordinate work between international and local organizations, and to enhance the exchange of information and experiences, in order to ensure a faster and more professional response to the needs of the families, indicating that the project aims to provide a clear guidance mechanism that connects families with legal and humanitarian authorities capable of providing appropriate support, in addition to establishing a preliminary database based on information shared by organizations and victims' associations through a questionnaire available in several languages, including Arabic and English and Kurdish and Turkish.

Decree establishing the National Authority for Missing Persons

 The move comes in the context of the role assigned to the Commission since its establishment under Presidential Decree No. 19 of 2025, which made it the only official authority authorized to investigate the fate of the missing in Syria.

Thus,  the Commission  has moved from the stage of sporadic efforts to the stage of organized work, in a way that puts the file of the missing on an institutional path capable of responding to the rights of the victims and their families, and paves the way for a more comprehensive national process in the search for the truth and redress for those affected.

Authority: 300,000 missing and 63 mass graves

Estimates of the number of missing in Syria vary significantly depending on the documentation body and the time period it reaps, but the data available until May 2026 reveal the scale of a decades-long tragedy.

In official estimates, the head of the National Authority for Missing Persons, Mohammad Reza Jalkhi, confirms that the number could exceed 300,000 from 1970 to 2026, with reference to a special category of children numbering between 3,000 and 5,000 missing children.

The Commission confirms the existence of a  map that includes more than 63 mass graves distributed in different areas, which reflects the depth of the violations and the difficulty of reaching the truth.

Disparity in international statistics

 International and human rights organizations provide varying figures according to their methodologies, with the United Nations indicating that between 100,000 and 130,000 people have been missing since 2011, while the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) documents by name at least 113,218 missing or forcibly disappeared as of early 2026, including thousands of women and children.

In a field investigation published by The Independent in January 2026, the number is estimated to be as high as 181,000 missing, with limited access to identify victims or burial sites.

Despite the political transformation witnessed in the country after the fall of the former regime at the end of 2024, human rights reports continue to indicate that violations continue, with the Syrian Network for Human Rights recording at least 210 new arrests and detentions during the first quarter of 2026.

In the face of this reality, the National Commission for Missing Persons is working to build a national database that collects information from residents and organizations, in an effort to consolidate the numbers and lay a more solid foundation for the path of truth, justice and redress for victims.