On 25 March 2014, the National Democratic Institute, the European Foundation for Democracy and No Peace Without Justice are convening an official presentation of the Syria Transition Roadmap, to be held at the European Parliament, in Brussels.

Co-hosted by Dr. Andrey Kovatchev MEP (EPP), the briefing includes an exchange of views with representatives of the Syria Center for Political and Strategic Studies and the Syrian Expert House. The Syria Transition Roadmap contains a comprehensive assessment of political, institutional and social considerations, as well as specific recommendations for the post-conflict democratic transition in Syria.

The speakers include: Dr. Radwan Ziadeh, Executive Director, Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies; Ekhlass Badawi, Former Syrian MP and Member of the Syrian Expert House Working Group on Political and Administrative Reform; Hazem Nahar, Researcher, Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies; Reem Joha, Member, Syrian Expert House; Mohamed Dughaim, Reyhanli Office Director, Syrian Expert House.

The Syrian Expert House – a combined group of approximately 300 human rights activists, academics, members of the political opposition, government officials and military officers who have defected, members of local revolutionary councils and commanders of the armed opposition – has developed these recommendations on constitutional reform and rule of law, political and administrative reform, electoral reform and political parties law, security sector reform, transitional justice and national reconciliation and economic reform. The recommendations presented in the report represent a revolutionary consensus on the democratic transition in Syria.

NPWJ’s Syria Project on Justice and Accountability
NPWJ project aims at reducing the expectation and rewards of impunity and at building a culture of accountability. The purpose is to equip citizens to demand accountability and justice for violations taking place on a daily basis for the past two and a half years and, at the same time, to equip the judiciary and legal profession to answer that demand. The mainstay of the project is a series of advocacy and training events, which are being held in Gaziantep, Turkey, near the Syrian border, with Syrian judges, lawyers and civil society activists from Syria who can bring the skills and (perhaps more importantly) aspirations for justice back to their work and their constituents inside Syria. The long-term goal of this project is to promote democracy and human rights protection through incorporating justice and accountability in decision-making on conflict resolution and stability, development, and reconstructing planning in Syria. The project’s strategic objective is to support Syrian civil society playing an active role on justice and accountability issues, including advocacy and documenting human rights violations, including receiving, gathering, collecting, collating, processing and securely storing information, documentation and materials and analyse it for the purpose of establishing what happened and reconstructing decision-making processes that resulted in violations international humanitarian and human rights law in Syria since March 2011.
For further information, contact Hadi Al-Khateeb on hadi@npwj.org or Nicola Giovannini on ngiovannini@npwj.org or +32-2-548-3915.