The lack of transparency and the spread of corruption in Syria are two of the main factors that resulted in a social movement that began by demanding reform and ended by demanding the overthrow of the country’s ruling power.
This research, completed by CCSD in 2015, aims to identify the reality of transparency within emerging Syrian non-governmental institutions, and to explore their strengths and weaknesses in this area in order to produce recommendations that will increase their transparency.
In his introduction to the research, Professor Daniel Serwer of the Conflict Management Program at John Hopkins University writes, “This growth of civil society in wartime Syria is one of the country’s saving graces. As the authors of this fascinating and path-breaking report put it, despite the humanitarian disaster Syria is standing on the first page of the end of despair, because it has generated one of the key elements of a more open and democratic society. Syrians have been ingenious in inventing the institutions that fill the vacuum collapse of the dictatorship left behind.”