Synergy is documenting human rights abuses across Syria and ensuring no story gets forgotten.
When the Synergy Association for Victims was established in 2021, it had a clear aim: to enable the survivors of human rights abuses to lead the fight for their own rights through a community-based approach.
"Synergy is a victim-led group dedicated to ensuring justice for all victims of conflict in Syria by empowering them to represent themselves and defend their rights," the Synergy team say.
Synergy documents violations by all parties – not just the Assad regime and ISIS, but also the Syrian Democratic Forces and Turkish-backed groups to ensure balanced narratives for under-covered regions.
Today, ten full-time employees and eighteen contractors, including, researchers, legal experts, field investigators, work primarily across north and northeast Syria, in cities including Qamishli, Hasakah, Raqqa, and Aleppo. Critically, almost all team members are victims and survivors.
This creates an obvious psychological burden for the team, that Synergy takes seriously. A dedicated psychosocial support team works with staff on an ongoing basis, offering individual sessions, group workshops, and specialised training on how to protect themselves emotionally while they collect testimonies. Synergy has built real expertise in this area, developing this capacity with support from international partners.
Five interconnected programmes recording and advocating for human rights
Synergy works across five interconnected programmes. The first is documentation: systematically recording human rights violations across Syria, including arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearance and forced displacement. They use a rigorous field methodology, that they have improved thanks to EED’s support, documenting human rights violations and collecting testimonies. All findings are stored in a large, secure database Bayanat, which now holds more than 35,000 units of data.
The second programme is accountability. Synergy shares their data with major international mechanisms, including the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) and the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM), with whom they signed a Memorandum of Understanding in 2022.
“In 2024 alone, we provided IIIM with 335 testimonies, and evidence and supporting documents about war crimes and human rights violations in Syria,” they explain.
They also collaborate with war crimes units in Europe and the United States, as well as major human rights organisations and the International Commission on Missing Persons (IIMP).
The third area is victim empowerment, helping to build the capacity of communities to organise and advocate for themselves.
“We give a lot of trainings to communities, related to issues like transitional justice, advocacy, how to advocate on our cases and on other priorities. We want victims and survivors of human rights violations to actively participate in transitional justice and to advocate for their rights,” they explain.
As part of this work, in June 2024, Synergy established their Missing Persons Families Platform in north and east Syria, which now brings together more than 750 families from multiple ethnic groups to advocate collectively for their rights.
The fourth programme is direct victim support. The team provides ongoing psychosocial, legal, and medical assistance for survivors of torture and arbitrary detention.
The fifth programme is advocacy and networking, locally and internationally, particularly with UN bodies and the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI).
Working in Syria Today
While their work was initially focused on north-east Syria, since the fall of the Assad regime, Synergy have expanded to other regions throughout the country.
The fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 changed everything in Syria, yet as the Synergy team explain, human rights violations continue.
“In some ways it has got worse,” they say. “Violations did not stop with the fall of the Assad regime. Massacres occurred in the coastal region in early 2025. There was violence in al-Suwaida, and abuses continue across the country, with minorities facing particular uncertainty under the transitional government.”
In October 2025, they launched the Network of Statelessness Victims in al-Hasakah, addressing the situation of more than 150,000 people left stateless since a discriminatory 1962 census. These are people who have long lacked a voice.
Synergy also working with Syria's new National Commission for Transitional Justice and the Missing Persons Commission, maintaining careful independence while pushing for meaningful inclusion. For instance, when the transitional justice commission's founding mandate focused only on Assad-era crimes, Synergy advocated for a comprehensive approach covering violations by all parties.
They are currently collaborating with 25 civil society organisations to develop a transitional justice law that reflects the full scope of what Syrians have suffered.
A Syria without violations
Synergy's vision for the future is clear and ambitious: a Syria without violations, without enforced disappearances, with justice.
They want to build a society where victim-led advocacy is not the exception but the norm, where communities across Syria have the tools, the knowledge, and the organisation to defend their own rights.
In a country where the stories of ordinary people have so often been buried, Synergy is working every day to make sure that no victims’ cases are overlooked. Even in the context of decreased funding and the current instability of Syria, they are determined that one day, there will be accountability for all.
This article reflects the views of the grantees featured and does not necessarily represent the official opinion of EED.
