The Advisory Board is one of several means to ensure the active and meaningful participation of family members of the missing, survivors, and civil society in the Independent Institution's work. It provides a channel for the Independent Institution to seek advice and views from Syrian and international experts.
Download the Terms of Reference
Access the Advisory Board's Terms of Reference (Arabic).
Victims Category
Co-founder and Co-Executive of the Association of Detainees and the Missing in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP), and Advisory Committee member of the Global Network of Victims and Survivors to End Wartime Sexual Violence (SEMA), is a human rights defender and survivor of 21 years of detention. He endured 15 years of enforced disappearance in Syrian detention centers, especially Sednaya prison. He advances mental health, advocacy, and interim reparations, amplifying survivors’ voices with resilience.
Human rights defender and the Executive Director of Synergy Association for Victims. He has more than 14 years of experience in Syrian civil society and is an expert in organizing and leading collective action for change. His work is dedicated to documenting violations, empowering victims, survivors, and their families, and promoting their meaningful and leadership participation in truth-seeking, accountability, and justice efforts.
Syrian political and civil activist and former detainee. She co-founded the Families for Freedom movement, demanding to know the fate of detainees and forcibly disappeared persons in Syria and have them released. She was a member of the UN Special Envoy for Syria’s Women's Advisory Board in 2016, and of its Constitutional Committee – Civil Society Group in 2019.
Member of Families for Freedom and is responsible for programmes to empower and support victims' families at the organisation Dawlaty. She contributed to collecting and documenting testimonies of life under siege in Eastern Ghouta until the forced displacement of many of its residents in 2018 for the Syrian Oral History Archive. During the same period and in eastern Ghouta, she also worked in education and health services for besieged residents.
Syrian-Palestinian journalist and has several forcibly disappeared persons in his family. He is an activist with the Truth Tents movement, which works to amplify the voices of families and their demands to uncover the fate of their loved ones and defend the rights of victims. He participates in humanitarian initiatives and events to support families and highlight their cause, contributing to the promotion of the values of truth, justice and freedom in Syria.
Founding member of the Caesar Families Association, which has highlighted the issue of missing persons and victims of enforced disappearance and was a key voice in the call for establishing the Independent Institution by victims. With the start of the civil movement in Syria, she became involved in peaceful activism, and lost five of her brothers; four of them were killed by the Syrian regime and one by ISIS in Deir ez-Zor. Yasmen has helped to develop international mechanisms and programmes relating to victim participation, torture survival and psychological trauma, and human rights violations. She is a member of INOVAS, a global network for victims of gross human rights violations.
Syrian Civil Society Category
Executive Director of Justice for Life, a Syrian human rights organisation and is a board member and consultant at several Syrian and international civil society organisations and platforms. He focuses on improving the human rights situation in Syria in various political, civil, economic, cultural and social areas.
Syrian lawyer and a feminist. She is a Senior legal advisor in the International Crimes and Accountability program at the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, with a particular focus on Syria and sexual and gender-based violence. She is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and co-founder of several feminist movements in Syria. She was Chairwoman of The Day After, a leading Syrian organisation focused on transitional justice, from 2020-2023.
Co-founder of Sama Handmade, a women-led initiative in Syria, and currently serves as an Area Manager at Women Now for Development, a leading Syrian women’s organisation. She has over a decade of experience working with grassroots initiatives and families of victims of enforced disappearance, integrating hands-on engagement with sustainable programs and a deep understanding of the needs and complexities faced by families in their search for answers.
International Experiences Category
Forensic anthropologist. Since 1998 she has coordinated international efforts to identify missing persons in contexts of conflict and human rights violations, working across more than 25 countries. She currently serves as Director for Eurasia and the Middle East at the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF).
Distinguished Fellow at NYU’s Center on International Cooperation (CIC) and serves as a Commissioner on UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria. He has held senior positions in several international organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Center for Transitional Justice, and at the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights. He has led numerous human rights investigation missions and conducted high-level discussions with governments in the MENA and Asia Pacific regions.