Inheritance crime in Salqin

The Syrian Future Movement is following with deep sorrow and condemnation the details of the horrific crime that took place in the city of Salqin in the Idlib countryside on Thursday, July 30, 2026. A woman stabbed her sister three times in a row with a knife in a public street following a long-standing dispute over inheritance.

The injured woman was transferred to the intensive care unit at Salqin Central Hospital, while security forces arrested the perpetrator.

The distressing details reveal that the two sisters lived with their families in the same house, amidst difficult living conditions and extreme poverty, which exacerbated the financial dispute in recent days.

The Syrian Future Movement notes that the Salqin incident is not isolated, but rather part of an alarming escalation of domestic violence and family conflicts in Syria.

According to a report issued by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, 268 civilians were killed in the first quarter of 2026, including 43 children and 27 women.

Field data indicates that inheritance disputes are a major contributing factor to these crimes, especially given the deteriorating economic conditions that intensify competition for scarce resources.

Human rights reports confirm that depriving women of their inheritance rights remains a deeply entrenched social pattern in Syria, fueled by a combination of family pressures and informal traditions, despite the clear legal and religious frameworks that guarantee these rights.

The gap between legal texts and their implementation remains wide, with social factors intertwined with a lack of awareness and psychological pressures. This places Syrian women in a difficult position, forcing them to choose between preserving family unity and demanding their rights—a dilemma that often results in personal and psychological losses before any form of justice is achieved.

In this context, the Syrian Future Movement reiterates its consistent positions, published on its official website, which emphasize the priority of rebuilding the Syrian family and protecting women from violence:

The statement “Rebuilding the Syrian Family in the Transitional Phase” (dated October 5, 2025), in which we stressed that rebuilding the family must be a priority during the transitional phase, and that the Syrian family, torn apart by war, needs supportive policies that protect its cohesion and strengthen its role in building society.

The statement “Violence and Abuse Against Syrian Women” (dated September 6, 2023), in which we presented solutions and proposals to address the phenomenon of violence against women, including reforming laws and policies that protect women’s rights and strengthening legal and social protection mechanisms.

However, the Syrian Future Movement believes that what happened in Salqin reveals deeper challenges that require fundamental solutions:

1. The weakness of mechanisms for resolving family disputes. The absence of family reform and community reconciliation centers allows conflicts to escalate until they reach the point of violence.
2. The delay in determining inheritance and dividing estates is a serious legal error. Ignoring or delaying the division of inheritances opens the door to complex family disputes and can lead to the loss of rights.
3. Weak legal awareness is another issue. Many Syrians, especially women, are unaware of their legal inheritance rights or fear claiming them due to social pressures.
4. Bureaucracy, compounded by the complexities of war, creates obstacles to registering or amending civil events, directly impacting inheritance and estate division issues.
5. The absence of family protection institutions means there are no effective mechanisms for early intervention in family disputes, nor are there shelters for victims, allowing violence to persist in a vicious cycle.

Based on its national responsibility to monitor the state-building process, the Syrian Future Movement recommends the following:

1. Establishing family reform and community reconciliation centers in every governorate. These centers would work to resolve family disputes before they escalate and would include specialists in law, psychology, and social work.
2. Expediting inheritance procedures and estate division by simplifying legal processes, reducing litigation time, and activating the role of judicial reconciliation committees in inheritance cases.
3. Launching national legal awareness campaigns, specifically targeting women and families, to inform them of their legal inheritance rights and the mechanisms for claiming them, with a focus on rural and impoverished areas.
4. Strengthening the role of civil society organizations in raising awareness about the dangers of domestic violence and providing psychological and legal support to victims.
5. Developing legal protection mechanisms for women by facilitating access to justice and providing temporary protection for women exposed to domestic violence.
6. Addressing the economic causes of domestic tension through programs supporting impoverished families, providing job opportunities, and alleviating poverty, which fuels conflicts.

The Syrian Future Movement reiterates its strong condemnation of this heinous crime and expresses its full solidarity with the injured woman, wishing her a speedy recovery.

The crime in Salqin serves as a stark warning, reminding everyone that building a new Syria is not limited to constructing buildings and reconstruction, but extends to rebuilding the social fabric, protecting the Syrian family from disintegration, and ensuring that family relationships are based on affection and respect, not conflict and violence.

For its part, the Syrian Future Movement will remain a supporter of everything that strengthens the cohesion of the Syrian family and protects women, a critic of everything that threatens social peace, and a monitor of everything that is accomplished on the ground, striving for a new Syria where justice and compassion prevail, and where there is no place for violence in the name of inheritance.