A Year in Review 2023 - 2024
Every year as we work on developing our annual report, I appreciate the process as a chance for us to reflect on what we have accomplished over the past year and what we have learned. Sometimes we forget about something really cool and impactful that we did many months ago, and it’s inspiring for us to remember. Other times we groan as we recall something that did not go as planned. Either way, it’s extremely useful for us to spend time revisiting exactly what we did and analysing across programmes what was meaningful and what was, perhaps, less so.
Expansion of our work - into Iraq and South Sudan - were highlights from this past year that we are proud of. Our roots as an organisation are in the Syrian conflict, but we have long known that our methodologies, in terms of working with local partners and supporting survivors of human rights violations, are applicable to populations around the world. We saw this to be true as we expanded our work into South Sudan and Iraq, and as we continue to explore collaborations with partners in Ukraine. We also began partnering with the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience to support their global initiatives related to conflict-related sexual violence and transitional justice, and we look forward to collaborating further in the coming year.
As part of our ongoing commitment to justice for Syrian survivors of detention, torture, and sexual violence, we transferred custody of over 600 hard copy forensic evidence files to the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism - Syria (IIIM) in Geneva on behalf of our partner Lawyers and Doctors for Human Rights. We know this evidence will be valuable in war crime prosecutions, and with our partners, we continue to forensically document torture and sexual violence cases for both adults and children. We also published and launched the Syria Supplement to the second edition of the International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict (IP2) as well as a medical journal article documenting the impacts of sexual violence perpetrated against men in Syrian detention centers.
We continued to expand our educational initiatives and digital footprint through blogs, newsletters, reels, and webinars in order to raise awareness of human rights and justice issues and to share protocols and best practices that we have developed. If you have not already subscribed, please click here and sign up to ensure that you receive the latest updates about future webinars and release of justice tools.
I would like to thank our partners and donors for their support of our work. We truly value their shared commitment to advance justice and accountability around the world.