We at the Center for Civil Society and Democracy are pleased to continue our coordination and collaboration with several Syrian organizations, alongside the International Center for Transitional Justice, within the “Bridges of Truth” coalition. We remain actively engaged in all coalition activities, working collectively to advance the pursuit of transitional justice in Syria.
As part of the coalition’s initiatives, CCSD team members participated in a five-day training program in Beirut in February 2026. The training brought together a diverse range of Syrian civil society organizations to prepare for a series of dialogues and awareness sessions on transitional justice, to be held across various regions of Syria throughout the year. Our involvement is guided by a clear vision: to consolidate the principles of the transitional phase and ensure that transitional justice remains central to any future path for Syria.
The training adopted a highly participatory approach, combining technical expertise with participants’ lived experiences. Discussions explored the foundations and pathways of transitional justice, comparative experiences from countries such as Morocco, South Africa, Tunisia, The Gambia, and Côte d’Ivoire, and emerging Syrian legal frameworks on transitional justice and the missing. A core focus was equipping participants with practical facilitation tools, nonviolent communication skills, and strategies to address misinformation and community sensitivities.
A strong emphasis was placed on psychosocial awareness—ensuring that dialogue spaces are trauma-informed, ethically held, and do no harm to either participants or facilitators. The workshop also highlighted the importance of inclusive participation, particularly the meaningful engagement of victims as active partners in truth-seeking, memorialization, and accountability processes.
The training concluded with a concrete action plan: mapping and selecting partner organizations across Syrian governorates, conducting peer-to-peer facilitation trainings, implementing structured dialogue sessions, and producing policy-oriented recommendations to engage decision-makers.
For CCSD, this experience was more than a technical capacity-building opportunity; it marked a strategic step in advancing a Syrian-centered approach to transitional justice and reaffirmed our sustained commitment to placing it at the heart of the transitional period—grounded in community realities, psychological safety, and accountable, inclusive participation.
