The head of a UN-backed body investigating Syria’s missing people warned on Wednesday that time is running out to uncover the fate of tens of thousands who vanished during the country’s 14-year conflict and after the fall of former president Bashar Al Assad.
“Everyone has someone missing in Syria,” said Karla Quintana, head of the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in Syria. “This is something that every Syrian, unfortunately, has in common.”
Ms Quintana said the scale of the task was immense and that no single agency could take on the urgent effort alone.
She said it was essential to find a way to work together with the new Syrian commission.
“Confronting this requires mobilising every available skill, resource and capacity. We are realistic about the scale of this challenge,” she said. “Information is vital when looking for the missing. It allows us to connect the dots together.”
Ms Quintana said civil society estimates put the number of missing at about 130,000, while Syria’s National Commission for the Search of the Missing recently suggested the figure could exceed 300,000.
Behind each case lies a network of families whose lives have been suspended between hope, fear and mourning.
The IIMP, established by the UN General Assembly in June 2023, formally began its work in Syria after the fall of the Assad regime. It was born out of the determination of families who refused to give up on uncovering the truth about their missing loved ones.
It is, Ms Quintana said, “a very young institution,” still fighting for access, information, and trust. “We cannot find people if we don’t implement processes."
The IIMP is tracing layers of disappearance: those detained or made to vanish under the former regime; children taken to orphanages with altered identities; victims of ISIS; and the newest wave, migrants and civilians who disappeared after the fall of the regime in December 2024.
“In every country it is women who most often drive the search for loved ones and Syria is no exception," Ms Quintana said.
Thousands of others, including children, were taken from families accused of disloyalty.
DNA testing
The Syrian Network for Human Rights estimates that the Assad regime forced at least 3,700 children to disappear. Some were reportedly given new names and hidden in orphanages, with their identities erased.
Ms Quintana stressed that while DNA testing plays a crucial role, it is “only one element” in a long chain of inquiry that includes archives, testimonies and field investigations
“It often comes at the end to confirm what we already know,” she said, adding that she is going to Damascus next week.
For now, Ms Quintana and her team are racing against time, before memories fade, records are destroyed and witnesses die.
“Every day matters,” she said. “Every story we recover is a piece of Syria’s truth, before it’s lost forever.”
”We don’t want the families or the mothers of the missing to start dying before us being able to find an answer,"Ms Quintana said."We need to work as fast as possible.”
The IIMP is co-ordinating with Damascus on sharing data and expects to sign a preliminary agreement soon.
“We need information, access and trust, from families, from society and from the government,” she said. “We are in direct contact with them [authorities].”
Syria’s interim President Ahmad Al Shara has vowed to tackle the issue of forced disappearances, signing a presidential decree in May to create a National Commission for Transitional Justice and a National Commission for Missing Persons.
Both bodies are responsible with investigating questions of accountability, reparations and national reconciliation.
“Clarifying the fate of the missing is not only a matter of personal closure, it is also a cornerstone of a serious path towards justice, reconciliation and reform,” Ms Quintana said. “Time is of the essence."
