event

Looking Back to Look Forward: The Role and Challenges of Accountability in Post-Assad Syria

Mon. March 24th, 202510:00 AM - 11:00 AM (EDT)
Virtual

The Assad regime fell in December 2024, ending nearly half a century of iron-fist repression and over a decade of civil war. Now, a transitional government has formed, demobilization has begun, and leaders are working to address the urgent humanitarian, security, reconciliation, and reconstruction needs facing the war-torn country. As part of this process, Syrian interim authorities have taken early steps towards developing and implementing a national dialogue, a new constitution, and the transitional justice measures that will be needed to achieve an inclusive, sustainable and stable future.  

From the regime’s use of chemical weapons and starvation as a method of war against civilians, to the torture, arbitrary detention, and forced disappearance of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, the atrocities committed throughout the civil war are among the most well-documented in modern history. This has been due in large part to the documentation efforts of the Syrian civil society itself, with the assistance of the international community, which has mandated numerous investigations. Justice and accountability for such crimes remains essential to finding a sustainable path forward for Syria.   

What does accountability look like for post-Assad Syria? How can it be pursued amidst the varying, and often competing, priorities facing Syria’s new authorities? What challenges lay ahead for its pursuit, and what are the key avenues worth exploring to do so?  

Join the Global Order and Institutions Program for a panel discussion moderated by Federica D’Alessandra, a British Academy Global Innovation Fellow and author of the recent Carnegie paper, International Crimes Accountability Matters in Post-Assad Syria, featuring Stephen J. Rapp, former U.S. ambassador-at-large for the Office of Global Criminal Justice, UN Assistant Secretary General Robert Petit, Omar Alshogre, director of detainee affairs at the Syrian Emergency Task Force, and Nousha Kawabat, head of the Syria Program at the International Center for Transitional Justice as they examine these and other questions. 

Global GovernanceSyria
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
event speakers

Omar Alshogre

Director of Detainees Affairs, Syrian Emergency Task Force

Omar Alshogre is the director of detainees affairs at the Syrian Emergency Task Force. He is a Syrian refugee and human rights advocate known for his personal experience with torture and starvation during three years of detention by the Syrian government. Omar is one of the few survivors of Syria’s prisons; he was smuggled out of detention with the help of his mother in June 2015. Today, Omar is a Swedish resident and dedicates his life to legal prosecutions against war criminals in Syria and liberating political prisoners around the world. He travels globally to speak on leadership during a crisis and is proud to be Syrian.

Federica D'Alessandra

Federica D’Alessandra

British Academy Global Innovation Fellow, Global Order and Institutions Program

Federica D’Alessandra is the British Academy Global Innovation Fellow with the Global Order and Institutions Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Nousha Kabawat

Head of Program, Syria, International Center for Transitional Justice

Nousha Kabawat is head of the International Center for Transitional Justice's (ICTJ) Syria program and has led its programmatic work since 2016. She has expertise in displacement, detainees and the missing, strengthening civil society, empowering youth, mental health and psychosocial support, and accountability. Nousha has organized trainings for hundreds of Syrian activists across the MENA region and Europe focused on conflict resolution, negotiations, constitutional reform, and transitional justice.

Robert Petit

UN Assistant Secretary General

Robert Petit is Head of the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism to Assist in the Investigation and Prosecution of Persons Responsible for the Most Serious Crimes under International Law Committed in the Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011. Prior to this role, he has held various international senior prosecutorial positions, including as International Co-Prosecutor of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Senior Trial Attorney at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and Prosecutor of the Serious Crimes Unit, United Nations Mission in East Timor.

Stephen J. Rapp

Senior Fellow for International Justice, Center on National Security, Georgetown Law

Stephen J. Rapp is a Senior Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Prevention of Genocide, and at Oxford University’s Center for Law, Ethics and Armed Conflict. He also serves as Chair of the Center for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA). From 2009 to 2015, he was Ambassador-at-Large heading the Office of Global Criminal Justice in the US State Department. Rapp was the Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone from 2007 to 2009 where he led the prosecution of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. From 2001 to 2007, he served as Senior Trial Attorney and Chief of Prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where he headed the trial team that achieved the first convictions in history of leaders of the mass media for the crime of direct and public incitement to genocide. He was United States Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa during 1993 to 2001. He received his BA degree from Harvard, and his JD degree from Drake.