Gaia Giacchetti
October 22, 2026
During the Syrian Civil War, torture and disappearances of civilians, air strikes and bombings of residential areas and genocide and sexual enslavement of minorities were commonplace. While Bashar al-Assad’s terror regime over Syria fell on Dec. 8, 2024, the prosecution of these crimes cannot be forgotten.
The current Syrian government under Ahmed al-Sharaa recognizes the importance of justice, but is facing tedious challenges in prosecuting the perpetrators of human rights abuses. Recently artificial intelligence has been proposed as a faster solution, but what are its benefits and risks?
The “Justice Entrepreneurs” – Efforts Before AI Took the Lead
Al-Sharaa’s fragile transition into government presents international justice practitioners an opportunity to intervene and help restore security and dignity for Syrians. Before AI, nongovernmental organizations were the most active entities that tried to fill the gaps in institutional frameworks and promote transparency in Syria. In particular, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression have played critical roles in promoting avenues for justice while holding Syrian and international political leaders accountable for the protection of fundamental human rights. Basing their activity on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ECCHR and SCM emphasize the need to restore the right to life, security and a fair trial. These groups aim to secure international arrest warrants and investigate those responsible for the humanitarian crimes.
Among its most outstanding efforts, the ECCHR collaborates with European courts to organize universal jurisdiction trials. Published this July, a dossier entitled “Austrian court convicts high-ranking Syrian regime official” details a trial in Vienna that convicted high-ranking intelligence officer Khalid al-Halabi. The ECCHR also works with several Syrian civil society organizations that fight for justice on behalf of all victims and missing persons. As the international non-profit organization Impunity Watch reports, these CSOs, mostly launched by families who share common visions on advancing victims’ rights, created the “Truth and Justice Charter.” The charter features coalitions of people who formally advocate for the missing and demand justice on their behalf.
Meanwhile, the SCM uses social media as a fundamental tool to collect information, monitor the enforcement of rights, and spread awareness on how investigations proceed while protecting journalism and independent voices.
However, there are several legal issues. Because Syria is not part of the Rome Statute, its trials cannot be presented for investigation at the International Criminal Court. This impediment forces the ECCHR and the SCM to operate under the frameworks of universal jurisdiction through third-party states’ courts, which often lack international judges. According to an analysis on Syria’s justice efforts by human right researchers Brigitte Herremans and Tine Destrooper, the situation worsens when political deadlock in third-party states hampers access to judicial accountability measures and delays decision-making processes. Because of these impediments, the work of the ECCHR and SCM is not sufficient on its own.
Dire conditions such as these have led actors to place a good portion of complicated and sensitive transnational justice matters in the hands of AI.
AI Settling Post-Civil War Legal Matters – Just a Shortcut?
Syria's use of AI, alongside international courts, CSOs and NGOs, to address legal matters is a locally built innovation. This initiative derives from the desire of grass-root entrepreneurs in Syria, such as the Syria Justice Innovation Process and the Hague Institute for Innovation of Law, to halt the breakdown of civic registers, courts and administrative infrastructure. Ideally, AI could pacify the chaos that ensued from the civil war and that has prevented victims of the Assad regime from receiving justice in a timely and reasonable fashion. Digital tools help refugees and displaced Syrians to deal with labour disputes, the loss of property and legal paperwork – all of which prevent them from reclaiming a civic status and rights. A more scrupulous analysis of AI platforms used reveals that:
Yasmina Bot provides confidential legal support for women facing violence.
Haki Bi Idi complements Yasmina Bot’s role by offering guidance through personalized consultations and rights-based information to women working in Syria’s informal sectors.
SyrGo delivers civil and personal legal documents to refugees and immigrants residing outside Syria to contrast the current black market reality in the country, one where lawyers charge exorbitant prices for getting documents certified within Syria.
Waseet gives access to legal information, instant consultation and mediation pathways to resolve disputes between workers and employers in the private sector “quickly and fairly.”
The Syria Justice Innovation Process is convened and facilitated by the Hague Institute for Innovation of Law, which in turn is founded by the European Union, which thereby supports these innovative practices.
Another story recounts that during the “Damascus Dossier” journalistic investigative process, “Assad’s master of cleansing” was identified thanks to an AI model developed by a team member that was able to scan and match stamps pertaining to this person across tens of thousands of fragmented scraps of paperwork from the Assad government. Recounting this story at a conference on AI and the Future of News on March 17, 2026, Enterprise Editor and Geospatial Investigator Ryan McNeill summarized the utility of these AI tools by saying: “it enabled us to find extremely extraordinary compelling stories about atrocities because of these tools (...) the ability to sift through lots of information and find the answers in a hurry.”
Nonetheless, the digital aftermath of the Syrian Civil War is as dangerous as it can be effective.
When used to address human rights crises, AI can curb social justice and reconciliation efforts by producing flawed humanitarian resource allocations and entrenching ethical and cultural disconnection. Eskander Ataallah, a doctoral student in international peace studies at the University of Notre Dame, says algorithms heavily contribute to “symbolic violence,” defined as the imposition of interpretative frameworks that normalize certain narratives or amplify general patterns of interaction, including emotions, while marginalizing others.
In Syria, where democracy is yet to take root, this phenomenon can favor polarization, impede mutual recognition of suffering and prioritize emotionally charged, sectarian or violent narratives over reconciliatory discourses. Additionally, in an interview Nada al-Farhan, the project leader of an initiative on digital safety for civilians named SalamaTech, recognizes the problematic lack of digital literacy and infrastructure in poorer, rural areas of Syria. This condition automatically excludes a number of minorities from digital justice, thereby “becoming victimized by those same [digital] tools” that should help them. AI itself is also unable to draw data from these poorer regions, Nada adds. Therefore it will provide answers only based on data patterns pertaining to wealthier digitalized areas, and completely fail to represent the wider social realities of Syria.
The use of AI also weakens efforts for transparent and democratic state-building under al-Sharaa. Foremost, documentation of human rights abuses can easily be misrepresented or deleted from social networks when algorithms mislabel it as banned “pro-terrorist” content. This removal of evidence from the web erroneously spares human rights abusers while neglecting victims, often nullifying transitional justice efforts. Based on findings by Reuters, by 2020, over one billion accounts across social media platforms were already deemed "terrorist" content. In May of the same year, the Syrian Archive detected more than 350,000 disappeared videos from Youtube, many featuring the protection and destruction of civilian areas in Syria. Secondly, fabricated information or AI hallucinations circulate rapidly and can be weaponized to fill the political vacuum left by the fallen regime or construct desired narratives through disinformation.
After 14 years of war, Syria’s transitional justice program is a legitimate opportunity to build a peaceful and pluralistic society. Yet it currently shows mixed results. Fast, promising milestones introduced by AI might create new grievances rather than address deeper structural and legal challenges.
The questions of whether Syria’s actions toward justice are symbolic or truly effective in the long term remains unanswered.
Photo Source: European Commission Audiovisual Service, wikimedia commons link
