The Syrian Future Movement joins the international community in celebrating International Archives Day, an occasion established by the International Council on Archives (ICA). This commemoration reaffirms the intrinsic value of archives as the faithful guardians of a people’s memory, a cornerstone for preserving national identity, and a guarantee of transparency and political and administrative accountability.
In our view, documentation and archiving represent the fundamental building blocks for establishing a state of institutions based on rights and the rule of law, particularly during this period of democratic transition in the country.
The Syrian Future Movement’s political and national vision views archives as a matter of national security and a historical legacy that has been subjected to systematic violations and grave dangers throughout the years of conflict. In this context, the Syrian Future Movement relies on evidence and statistics that reflect the magnitude of the challenge and the responsibility to preserve this legacy:
- Loss of administrative and legal records: Systematic destruction and looting have affected infrastructure and public institutions. Reports from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) indicate that more than 50% of infrastructure and service and administrative facilities in Syria have been destroyed or rendered inoperable. This includes civil and real estate registry offices and courts in many governorates and towns, posing a real threat that hinders the establishment of property ownership and the documentation of legal transactions for millions of citizens and displaced persons.
- The Digital Archive of Human Rights Violations: Syrian civil society organizations and documentation centers have made exceptional efforts to prevent the suppression of facts and the destruction of evidence. Specialized platforms, most notably the Syrian Archive, have successfully collected, preserved, and verified more than 3,578,591 digital records and visual documents. The importance of this archive lies in its being an irrefutable legal resource and a fundamental pillar for supporting transitional justice processes and ongoing international accountability for perpetrators of crimes.
- Documenting the Disappeared and the Issue of the Secret Archives: According to updated databases issued by the Syrian Network for Human Rights and its partner documentation bodies, more than 112,000 Syrian citizens remain forcibly disappeared in the security prisons and detention centers of the former regime. The Syrian Future Movement affirms that uncovering the fate of these victims is directly contingent upon meticulous, professional, and expert work to open the “secret archives of security headquarters” and the records of political prisons. These archives must be secured and protected internationally to prevent their destruction or tampering, as an indispensable step towards achieving justice and fairness.
The Syrian Future Movement views the “archives and national documents” as a starting point for a safe transition to the transitional phase and achieving sustainable stability through two parallel mechanisms:
- Maintaining civil peace: This involves protecting real estate and civil registry records to prevent property disputes or demographic manipulation, and guaranteeing the rights of internally displaced persons, refugees, and expatriates to a safe return and the restoration of their rights.
- Establishing a New Social Contract: Building a state of citizenship and institutions through the digitization of government archives and the application of good governance standards that guarantee access to information, prevent corruption, and enshrine the principle of transparency to ensure that the tragedies of the past are not repeated.
Based on the requirements of this stage, the Syrian Future Movement proposes the following recommendations and implementation steps:
- Establishing the “Supreme National Authority for Syrian Archives”: An independent body, comprising legal, technical, and historical experts, tasked with collecting and preserving all discovered government documents, security files, and court records, and ensuring their protection from tampering, damage, or political manipulation.
- Immediate Digital Transformation: Launching a comprehensive national project to digitize the remaining paper archives (real estate, medical, educational, and civil) and store them on secure, encrypted servers to protect them from physical disasters and field conflicts.
- Cooperation with and Recognition of Civil Efforts: Calling upon existing authorities and international institutions to adopt and secure the archives collected by human rights civil society organizations and integrate them into national and international judicial mechanisms to achieve transitional justice and redress.
- Updating Legislation and Laws: Drafting a modern national law for archiving and freedom of information that balances the state’s security and sovereignty requirements with the right of citizens and researchers to access historical and informational truth.
The Syrian Future Movement renews its pledge to the Syrian people to remain committed to the truth, supporting the building of a bright future founded on the solid principles of truth, documentation, and justice, to ensure that our national history is written by its own people with utmost integrity and honesty.
