Prepared in accordance with the OHCHR Technical Guidelines for stakeholders’ written submissions for the fourth UPR cycle.
I. Introduction and Methodology
1. While Syria’s fourth-cycle UPR review period also encompasses violations committed before December 2024, this submission focuses primarily on the rights of ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural communities following the fall of the former government on 8 December 2024. Under the principle of State continuity, the transitional authorities remain bound by Syria’s international human rights obligations, including its duty to remedy past and ongoing violations. Syria supported recommendations during its third-cycle UPR to preserve coexistence, ensure the participation of ethnic and religious groups in an inclusive political process, protect civilians, investigate serious violations and ensure accountability; these commitments remain substantially unimplemented.[1]
2. Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ) prepared this submission using first-hand interviews with victims, relatives and eyewitnesses, verified open-source material, official statements, and legal analysis contained in STJ reports. The submission uses ‘minorities’ as a practical human rights term, without treating any community as homogeneous or equating it with an armed or political actor.
3. STJ found recurring, though not identical, patterns affecting Alawite, Druze, Kurdish and Christian communities: identity-based killing and humiliation; arbitrary detention and torture; abduction and gender-based violence; forced displacement and property seizure; discriminatory exclusion from public employment; and incitement to collective punishment. Responsibility varies between State forces, formations incorporated into or operating under State structures, other non-State actors, and authorities that failed to prevent, halt or investigate foreseeable violations.
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[1] United Nations Human Rights Council, Report of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review: Syrian Arab Republic, A/HRC/50/6, 28 January 2022; Addendum, A/HRC/50/6/Add.1, 31 May 2022, including supported recommendations 133.90, 133.93, 133.132, 133.163 and 133.164.