The Syrian Future Movement attaches great importance to promoting administrative reform, good governance, and cooperative decentralization in Syria after the political transition. It believes that any step aimed at improving administrative and service performance must be approached within a legal and constitutional framework, while ensuring community participation and transparency.
In this context, the Syrian Future Movement welcomes the announcement made by the Governor of Aleppo regarding the division of the city into five administrative blocks, in an effort to facilitate service provision and improve communication between the administration and citizens.
From a legal perspective, the Syrian Future Movement believes that any new administrative division within a Syrian city must be implemented in accordance with Local Administration Law No. 107 of 2011, which stipulates that the approval of the Ministry of Local Administration is required before any official administrative unit can take effect. Therefore, while the decision represents a reformative step in principle toward decentralization and improving local administration, it remains legally incomplete unless it is ratified by the relevant minister and published in the Official Gazette.
The Syrian Future Movement believes that, from a political perspective, the decision can be considered an early test of the feasibility of implementing the principles of new local administration, but its success depends on the relevant parties’ adherence to legal and constitutional procedures.
The Syrian Future Movement recommends the following:
- Adherence to the legal framework, requiring the Ministry of Local Administration to ratify the decision in accordance with Local Administration Law No. 107 of 2011 for it to become officially effective, and publishing the full text of the decision and its legal justifications to ensure transparency and accountability.
- Involve civil society and local councils, and hold extensive consultations with neighborhood councils, civil society organizations, and economic actors to ensure effective citizen representation.
- Ensure fairness in services and resources, and establish clear criteria for distributing resources and budgets among the five administrative blocs, achieving justice and preventing marginalization or disparities in service provision.
- Review and accountability, and subject the decision to follow-up by the local council or the transitional local administration committee to evaluate implementation and measure results on the ground.
- Consider it a preliminary experiment that can be developed, and treat the division as a prototype that can be evaluated and improved before being generalized to the rest of Syrian cities, thus reinforcing the principles of good governance and decentralization.
The Syrian Future Movement affirms that the step of dividing Aleppo into five administrative blocs represents a positive step toward decentralization and improved local governance, provided that the law and the transitional constitutional declaration are adhered to and that the Ministry of Local Administration approves the measures for them to become effective and binding. The success of this decision reflects the ability of local authorities to rebuild effective, transparent, and citizen-friendly institutions, and serves as a benchmark for testing the credibility of administrative reform in Syria after the era of the former regime.
