Damascus, Sept. 23 (SANA) Syrian women who spent years searching for missing relatives hope a new national reporting programme and a United Nations decision recognizing their efforts will help families uncover the fate of their loved ones.
The UN General Assembly recently adopted a Syrian-sponsored resolution designating Dec. 19 as an international day honoring women searching for missing persons, highlighting the role of women who have turned years of uncertainty and loss into documentation and human rights efforts.
The decision came one day after the National Commission for Missing Persons launched the “Athar” programme and mobile application, which allows families to safely register information about missing and forcibly disappeared relatives and submit reports.
For many Syrian women, the search for missing family members has become a long-term effort involving documentation, advocacy and attempts to preserve records of what happened to their relatives.
Seeking truth and accountability
Women’s rights activist Maysaa Saeed told SANA that her mother spent years searching for her two detained sons, Mohammad and Baraa.
She said the search involved paying large sums of money, facing extortion while visiting security branches and enduring harassment while trying to obtain any information about their fate.
Saeed said the detention of her brothers, along with her participation in the revolutionary movement in Damascus Ghouta, contributed to her decision to leave Syria after becoming wanted by security services.
She said recognition of women’s experiences should be accompanied by practical steps, including revealing the fate of missing persons, ensuring families’ rights and providing reparations.
“Some mothers do not ask for more than knowing what happened to their children and where they were buried,” Saeed said, stressing the importance of reaching families and informing them about the Athar programme through community activities and initiatives linked to the National Commission for Missing Persons.
Waiting for answers
From the village of Deir al-Asafir in Damascus Ghouta, Amina al-Baqai recalled her search, which began in 2018, for her detained husband and brother.
She had already lost her two children, Khalil and Ghiath, as well as her brother Abdulqader, during shelling in Eastern Ghouta.
Al-Baqai later learned through civil registry records that her brother Ahmad had died in the deposed regime’s detention facilities. Despite the years that have passed, she said her mother continues to wait for his return, like thousands of other families seeking information about missing relatives.
She described the international recognition of women searching for missing persons as an important step that should be followed by concrete measures, expressing hope that the Athar programme would help families obtain answers.
From detention survivor to documentarian
Rima Odeh, a survivor of the ousted regime’s prisons, said she was detained after being stopped at a checkpoint because her identity card indicated she was from Daraya.
She was later transferred to Branch 227, where she spent more than two months in detention. Odeh said the detention room sometimes held around 50 women, adding that the sounds of torture from rooms where male detainees were held remained among the most difficult memories of that period.
She later documented her experience with the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Sednaya Prison, saying documentation helped preserve her account and the experiences of other women who endured similar conditions.
Odeh said the UN decision recognizing women searching for missing persons was significant because it acknowledged years of efforts by women involved in searching, documenting and preserving records.
She is currently working with a group of women to establish a network focused on documenting women’s experiences, amplifying their voices and carrying out community work. The initiative remains in its early formation and training stages.
The experiences of these women reflect the wider impact of disappearance and detention on Syrian families, while showing how many survivors and relatives have moved from searching for answers to documenting events and seeking truth.
N.J/MF
