The Syrian Network for Human Rights
(No Justice without Accountability)
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), an independent human rights organization, monitors and documents human rights violations in Syria, mobilizing our efforts and capabilities towards limiting them, contributing to the protection of the victim’s rights, exposing the perpetrators of violations in preparation for holding them accountable, raising awareness amongst Syrians of their civil and political rights, promoting the optimal conditions for human rights, advancing transitional justice, supporting democratic change, and achieving justice and peace in Syria.
SNHR was founded in June 2011, as a result of the systematic increase in human rights violations in Syria, at the initiative of Mr. Fadel Abdul Ghany, who is currently the CEO.
SNHR has monitored and documented human rights violations in Syria on an ongoing basis since 2011 to date, and has established databases to archive and catalogue incidents of violations, which SNHR develops continuously, taking into account the latest developments and their context in Syria, and recording on these databases the largest possible amount of data regarding many types of gross violations of human rights, using a working methodology developed specifically in the context of the nature of the non-international armed conflict in Syria and according to the universal human rights standards, declarations, covenants, and conventions issued by the United Nations.
SNHR reflects what it documents in its databases through the materials it continuously issues, including thematic human rights reports dealing with research, statistics and analysis with one or more types of human rights violations, and periodic, monthly and annual reports on the human rights situation in Syria. SNHR also issues charts and interactive maps on its official website dealing with specific statistics, or an analysis of the reality of one or more violations that are practiced on Syrian soil, in addition to many daily news on human rights violations in Syria.
SNHR shares the data it has documented on its database with international bodies concerned with monitoring the human rights situation in Syria, such as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR); the Independent International Commission of Inquiry (UN-COI); the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (UN-IIIM); the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA); the Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism (MRM) on Grave Violations Against Children in situations of Armed Conflict, led by UNICEF; the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW); the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID); and a number of special rapporteurs appointed by the Human Rights Council (UNHRC); the US Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; and a number of human rights offices in the foreign ministries of countries that issue reports on the human rights situation in Syria, as well as with international human rights organizations, research centers, universities and media institutions that publish research, reports and investigations on the human rights situation in Syria.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) also supports advocacy efforts for victims of human rights violations in Syria through holding bilateral or group meetings with international decision-makers and politicians, United Nations agencies and committees, human rights international organizations and bodies, and with human rights defenders around the world. In addition to these activities, SNHR also participates in organizing advocacy events to mobilize capabilities and efforts within the framework of curbing human rights violations in Syria, advancing transitional justice, supporting democratic change, and achieving justice and peace in Syria.
SNHR is a member of the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect (ICRtoP), the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, the International Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), and the Every Casualty Worldwide (ECW).
By signing partnership agreements and memoranda of understanding, the Syrian Network for Human Rights works in cooperation with many distinguished international and regional bodies and institutions, including United States governments, Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, the German Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Medi), Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Global Public Policy Institute (GPPI), Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD), Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), EuroMed Rights, Paris School of Economics (PSE), New York Times, Oxford Research Group (ORG), Durable Solutions Platform (DSP), and the Syria Campaign.