Justice & Accountability

Alex Rowell from Al-Jumhuriya speaks to Dr. Bente Scheller, director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation's Middle East office, on the recent German elections and their likely impact on European Syria policy, the ongoing debate over Western participation in the future reconstruction of Syria, threats faced by Syrian refugees both in Europe and here in the Middle East, recent military developments against ISIS and other actors in Syria’s east and north, and much more.

No matter how complex and religiously driven the conflict in Syria may seem, its basic constellation is this: A regime with powerful allies wages a war of annihilation against wide parts of its own population. How could it get to this point? And what is the very least we can do?

  Haid Haid on Transitional Justice in Syria - Heinrich Böll Foundation Beirut - Middle East Watch on YouTube This external content requires your consent. Please note our privacy policy.   Transitional justice is an essential element of sustainable peace. How successfully have Syrian NGOs been working on this matter? What can be done to support them? And where to go from here? We are delighted Haid N Haid will be discussing these matters in Beirut this Monday! Join us at Antwork at 7pm.

Over the past years, tens of thousands of men, women and children in Syria havee become subject to forced disappearances in Syria. All armed factions in Syria engage in arrests, abductions and human rights violations but none does so as systematcially as the Syrian regime. Despite its accession to the international convention against torture in 2004, conditions in regime prisons are excruciating. On July 12, the European Council for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and Heinrich Boell Stiftung Berlin screened the film "Syria's Disappeared" in which survivors of Syrian prisons and relatives of some tortured to death speak out.

A project-installation by Andrea Monras that revisits Beirut and Berlin today in relation to their similar tumultuous paths July 04, 2017 starting 7pm and running until July 10. Mansion- Zoukak el-Blatt Beirut, Lebanon

Beirut Cinema Days in partnership with Heinrich Boell Foundation - Middle East cordially invite you to a round table discussion and film screening of the film "Cinema Al Fouad" by Mohamma Soueid. Wednesday  22nd of March, at 6pm at Metropolis Empire Sofil.

  Crime, Perpetrators and those implicated in the conflict in Syria (1/3) - Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Watch on YouTube This external content requires your consent. Please note our privacy policy. Where can we begin to seek for justice in a war that sees violations of basic human rights committed by almost all conflicting parties? In our conference “How to do Justice? Accountability for Mass Atrocities in Syria” we invited panelists from different fields of expertise to find answers to this very urgent question.

When so-called ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS) fighters were reported to have blasted and bulldozed the ancient Assyrian site of Nimrud into the ground last year, the rest of the world lined up to condemn its actions. One ISIS militant, engaged in the destruction of Assyrian antiquities in the Mosul museum, told the camera ‘we were ordered by our prophet to take down idols and destroy them.’

Although the concept of borders has a long history, a definition remains quite ambiguous. It relies on a multitude of complex socio-political and economic elements that are at times contradictory. This is primarily due to the difficulty in establishing the shape and function of borders, since they are constantly changing and evolving. Thus, the concept of borders changes as you move between academic disciplines. There are a number of diverse approaches to the concept and each field employs ideas and philosophies specific to it; whether that is historical, geographical, political, sociological, anthropological, psychological or other, it is evident that there is no single definition. Nevertheless, the notion of the border relies heavily on John Locke’s notion of natural law and the demarcation of private property rights. It is a concept at the heart of knowledge production in the social sciences and has currency in the field of international relations.

I still remember the joy of a woman in my neighbourhood when she learned of another woman’s group passionately discussing news of the revolution in morning sessions. The morning session was the only occasion on which the women would come together. A sixty year-old woman was enumerating the female opposition figures in Syria, a place which had kept women silent for nearly four decades. Despite all she had seen during her long years, the political activist in her heart had not died.