It is 6:45 in the morning, and the temperature has plummeted to minus 21 degrees. I find myself waiting for bus number 121 at Grimard Station, only my eyes peeking out from the bundle of clothes. At this moment, I half-expect any tears I shed to freeze on the way down. The uncontrollable urge to cry has been a part of me ever since the…

We understand that slogans ought to be clear and straightforward, embodying the conviction typically associated with religious faith or positive determinism. However, such conviction is something we neither possess nor aspire to.

Between Normalization and “Early Recovery”

Interview with Dan Stoenescu, Charges D’Aaffaires of the EU to Syria

Humanitarian Crisis or Western Conspiracy

A Summary Report of Losses, Damages, and Disaster Diplomacy

The Arab political Order failed Syria since 2011.

The earthquake that struck southern Turkey and northern Syria at dawn on February 6, 2023, did not, naturally, take into account the dynamics of the conflict within the borders of Syria. Nor did it care that Syrians in Turkey needed a permit to visit their country, or that the Turkish gendarmerie were killing Syrians as they tried to cross the border. Naturally, the earthquake did…

Amjad sits behind the cash register of a takeaway restaurant. He talks to customers, takes money from them, and then answers the phone and writes down the caller’s order with their delivery address. Whenever an opportunity arises, he peeks into the book lying open on his feet. Amjad is a third-year student at the Faculty of Economics. He works evening shifts in this fast food…

The two-word farewell became the lyrics of a song. Its melody enveloped the long columns of cars as newly displaced families fled the hell of Russian airstrikes and Syrian regime forces, which were rapidly advancing on rural Aleppo, Hama and Idlib governorates in 2019.  ‘Goodbye, house’ This was the title of videos that began spreading across social media at the time. Perhaps the most famous…

In a two-day ceremony held in the New Palace’s “White Hall” in Stuttgart, Southwest Germany, Al-Jumhuriya received the 57th Theodor Heuss Medal for Special Democratic Commitment.Since 1964, the Theodor Heuss Foundation has celebrated the memory of the first German Federal President, Theodor Heuss, honoring individuals and institutions committed to defending democracy, freedom and human rights in Europe and the world.For the year 2022, the Foundation…

Having lived through unimaginable horrors over the past 11 years – including the loss of my five brothers to murder and enforced disappearance – I came to believe that nothing could shock me again or open the wounds that took so long to begin to heal. But as I write this, I realize that my wounds are far from being healed, and that the brutality…

As millions of Ukrainians escape from Russian invasion and receive a warm welcome by the European Union and supporters of the “refugee cause,” as well as by Afghans and Syrians who had come here as refugees who expressed a sense of both solidarity but also bewilderment. Surely, those fleeing the war in Ukraine deserve support. But doesn’t this apply to any refugee? Are Syrians and…

After Denmark’s recent steps to deport Syrian refugees, calls for similar measures are now on the rise in Germany; Syrians’ largest European haven. Is Europe steadily abandoning its human rights obligations?

The prevailing Western discourses about Syria are fundamentally flawed, and should be discarded in favor of “new, emancipatory” alternatives, writes Yassin al-Haj Saleh.

Based on years of fieldwork with displaced Syrians, anthropologist Dr. Charlotte Al-Khalili finds that while the Syrian revolution may not (yet) have produced political regime change, it has nonetheless brought about profound and likely permanent social transformations.

In an open letter marking ten years since Syria’s uprising began, over 300 signatories from Syria and 34 other countries decry the dehumanizing propaganda and disinformation with which Syrians are too often smeared in the name of left-wing or “anti-imperialist” politics.

Ten years on from Syria’s revolution, it’s high time Europeans grasped that Syrians’ struggle is also their own, and that Europe’s future cannot be roped off from the Middle East’s, argues Prof. Joachim C. Häberlen.