Madame President,

Excellencies,

Nineteenth months ago, Syria entered a new chapter in its history.

The historic morning of 8 December 2024 opened a new path towards hope, after more than five decades of fear, arbitrary detention, torture, and disappearance. 

Yet hope was accompanied by the daunting reality of a country whose cities lay in ruins, whose families had been torn apart, and whose institutions had been hollowed out. Syria was, in many ways, a nation suspended in time.

Among the many challenges confronting Syria today, few are as profound—or as consequential—as the fate of its missing.

When one person is missing from a family, the pain takes root in each of its members. When hundreds of thousands are missing from a society, pain and collective uncertainty consume it as a whole. It’s impossible to envisage stability, reconciliation and lasting peace in Syria without knowing the fate of the missing.

Several Member States represented here know well the magnitude of this challenge as well as the time it requires.

Thanks to the perseverance of the families of the missing, the tireless efforts of Syrian civil society, and the decision of this General Assembly to establish the Independent Institution on Missing Persons, Syrians do not have to face this challenge alone.

Madame President,

Our mandate is ambitious.

It is to clarify the fate and whereabouts of all missing persons in Syria and to support their families.

This cannot be achieved through isolated investigations. It requires building a comprehensive system that allows information to be gathered, analyzed, shared and transformed into answers.

Over the past year, we have started to provide families with information about their loved ones while building the systems that will enable us to provide many more answers in the future.

We have processed more than 75,000 documents—over nine times more than during the previous reporting period—while integrating large datasets and strengthening analytical tools that connect information across thousands of cases and further consolidate our pattern-based approach.

We have expanded our work on persons forcibly disappeared under the former regime, missing children, disappearances linked to Da’esh and other armed groups, persons gone missing during their migratory journey, and disappearances reported since December 2024. We have also gradually begun registering missing persons outside Syria.

Firmly believing that information-sharing is both essential to the search and one of its greatest challenges, we have offered access to our systems and information to international actors and to the Syrian authorities.

We have also made clear to our Syrian partners our commitment to jointly build the foundations of a comprehensive information-sharing system on missing persons in Syria based on international standards.

If we succeed together, we will not only increase the possibility of clarifying the fate and whereabouts of the missing in Syria but also set an example worldwide.

Madam President,

The Independent Institution is unique.

It exists because of the families, it works for the families, and it implements its mandate with the families. Supporting them is the second pillar of our mandate.

The challenge of reaching hundreds of thousands of families inside and outside Syria—and managing expectations—is immense.

This year, we expanded our direct engagement with families on the ground, including many who had never been contacted before.  We have worked with the Syrian diaspora in Türkiye, Lebanon, Jordan and Germany, to whose governments and civil society we extend our sincere thanks for their support. 

In Syria, although we have had some meetings with families and others have reached out to us, we have not yet been able to engage with them outside Damascus. 

We have strengthened referral pathways for legal, psychosocial, and other support, and deepened the participation of families and Syrian civil society through our Advisory Board and other participation mechanisms.

Madam President,

The existence of a national search mechanism is essential in a country confronting disappearances at the scale of Syria.

Since the outset, we have proposed and prioritized both concrete and strategic steps to provide sustainable and systematic support to the National Commission for Missing Persons following its establishment last year. In the concrete steps we agreed on several joint projects, where we have offered, for instance, tools for the mapping of hundreds of mass graves, information on concrete missing migrant cases, input for the necessary legal framework on missing persons, and establishing the basis for an information sharing system. On the more systematic support, we have offered our experience in building public policies for the missing, strengthening and training staff, building infrastructure.

Comparative experience shows that building an integrated response to a missing persons crisis of this magnitude takes years. It requires institutional capacity, adequate methodologies, trust, sustainable funding, and robust information systems. It also requires that all relevant national institutions support the search.

Several Member States represented in this Assembly have experienced this first-hand. We therefore have an ethical obligation to place the Independent Institution’s comparative experience and expertise at the service of Syria.

That’s what the families of the missing demand. That’s what they deserve.

As the Secretary-General noted in his report, establishing a permanent presence for the Independent Institution in Syria would significantly strengthen our ability to support our Syrian counterparts and effectively implement our mandate to look for everyone. I therefore reiterate our request, first made in May 2025, for authorization to establish an office in Syria, in the best interests of the missing and their families. 

Madam President,

Distinguished Delegates,

Syria has one of the highest numbers of missing persons in the world, both in absolute terms and relative to its population. Every Syrian has a missing or knows someone that does. This is an open wound. 

The search for missing persons must remain a priority in Syria. It is central to rebuilding trust, strengthening institutions, and laying the foundations for lasting peace.

Hundreds of thousands of families are waiting for concrete answers. Those answers can only be built with information flow, scientific methodology directed at finding the missing, political will at all levels, and trust.

The search for the missing is a collective endeavor. No institution can succeed alone. Progress depends on the willingness of all those involved to work in a coordinated and complementary manner and share responsibility at the service of the missing and their families.

The Independent Institution will remain firm on this path, working alongside Syrian families and civil society, the National Commission and other Syrian Institutions, relevant international partners, and Member States.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to everyone -individuals, families, CSOs- who has entrusted us with information -the core of the search. Thank you as well to the many Member States where Syrians have gone missing while fleeing, and who, today, support us in clarifying their fate and whereabouts. I also wish to express my appreciation to the Member States that have supported our work through voluntary contributions, in particular Germany, Canada, Sweden, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Malta.

Finally, allow me a special thought for the women of Syria. As in so many countries affected by disappearances, women often bear the burden of searching for missing loved ones while supporting their families and refusing to abandon hope. To them—who make the impossible possible—I offer my deepest recognition, respect and admiration.

Nineteen months into Syria’s new reality, we have taken important first steps. Much remains to be done.

Hope must balance with facts, intentions with results.

Thank you.

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