Legal Empowerment for 740 Women in Northwestern Syria
Between March and November 2024, we trained 19 lawyers and 760 Syrian women from IDP camps around Azaz, Atmeh and Sarmada. Our goals was to enhance the women’s understanding of their legal rights, feminist concepts and practical skills to address their own legal issues effectively. The training curriculum consisted of the following topics:
- Personal status issues: marriage and divorce rights, parentage of children
- Civil status issues: personal documents, ID card, family book, marriage registration, children’s registration, divorce registration, birth and death registration
- Inheritance and Property Rights: obtaining legal documents by proving ownership, obtaining inheritance and inventory documents, the role of notary agencies and court decisions
- Missing and absent individuals and the implications for wives, daughters and children
- Combatting violence against women: legal rights situation, filing a complaint; getting a medical report
We successfully asserted a clear separation between Syrian legal vocabulary and Islamic Sharia terms: Ex. nikah vs. marriage, shahid vs. deceased, asir vs. detainee, halal vs. legal.
The human rights of Syrian women and girls starts with their right to know – to become aware of their rights and to gain access to the law. Hundreds of thousands of women in North-Western Syria suffer from an acute lack of awareness and legal knowledge. They are locked in a cycle of dependency and poverty. Our project has proven that it is possible to break their exclusion from the law and improve their situation in a tangible way.
Supported by funds from the Federal Foreign Office through ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V.) in the zivik funding programme.
Legal Empowerment for 400 Women in Northwestern Syria
Between Juli-December 2023, we implemented a project to make laws work for Syrian women. We trained 10 local lawyers that, in turn, trained 400 IDP women on issues of basic human rights, women rights and specific aspects of Syrian law: marriage, divorce, registering children, property and inheritance. By making these 400 participants active partners in the process, rather than passive recipients of legal aid, we sought to break the cycle between exclusion, poverty and the law. Subsequently, the 400 Syrian women became empowered to solve most of their own legal problems in local courts and administrative institutions. We believe this approach to be simple, effective and impact oriented as envisioned by the UN-Commission for the Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP, 2005-2008).
Supported by funds from the Federal Foreign Office through ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V.) in the zivik funding programme.
Legal Advice and Services
FDSV e.V. offered legal advice and support services for Syrian citizens between 2015-2019, but only in regard to their needs in Germany. In 2021, we began to offer legal advice related to their legal needs within Syria itself. This activity is offered to all Syrian citizens who require legal support in the fields of personal status law, civil status law, real estate law and criminal law. In addition, we offer both legal advice and specific services for Syrian women and girls. This applies especially to victims of violence, sexualised violence, enforced marriage and polygamy. Our legal experts provide an assessment of individual circumstances, recommendations and/or referral to NGOs or volunteer lawyers that can support a lawful resolution in a neutral and qualified manner. If you want to apply for a legal service, please fill out this form and send it to us via email. In August 2021, we implemented a needs assessment (online) among Syrian citizens regarding their legal needs back home in Syria. Please find the results here. To participate in our study, please fill out this online form.