The Syrian Accountability Project is a cooperative effort between activists, non-governmental organizations, students, and other interested parties to document war crimes and crimes against humanity in the context of the Syrian Crisis.
Aims
- To produce impartial, high-quality analysis of open source materials and to catalog that information relative to applicable bodies of law, including the Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute, and Syrian Penal Law.
- To provide the best open-source picture of the Syrian conflict available by compiling and analyzing all relevant source material from an impartial stance and presenting data in a way which contributes to the reader’s understanding of both daily events and the conflict as a whole.
- To assist a future prosecution team in obtaining justice for the victims of the Syrian conflict by providing resources that assist in the work of representational charging.
Description of activities
The Project has worked closely with the Syrian National Coalition and other activist organizations to ensure that its approach is consistent with Syrian notions of justice.
Conflict Narrative: organized by month, date, and region, the Conflict Narrative recounts the situation on the ground in Syria as a series of events. The Conflict Narrative also includes information on key geopolitical developments relative to the major players in the conflict.
Crime Base Matrix: organized relative to applicable statutory law, the Crime Base Matrix catalogs those events which represent violations of the Laws of War and Syrian Penal Law.
The project has also started to document the Yazidi Genocide in Sinjar Province, Iraq.
Information on sources of funding/partners
The Project has recently been re-designated as a “special project” under the Umbrella of the Law Journal “Impunity Watch” (IW) at Syracuse University College of Law.
As a member of the International Working Group on Syria, it also works very closely with Impunity Watch, the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies, USIP's "Day After" project, PILPG, UNHR, and the Syria Justice and Accountability Project.
