 Good afternoon, and thank you for joining this event at the United States Institute of Peace. Today, we will hold a conversation on progress made by the international impartial and independent mechanism, the triple IM, towards fostering accountability for crimes committed in Syria and on the challenges facing the international community in delivering justice to Syrians affected by the war. My name is Michael Yaffe. I'm the vice president for the Middle East North Africa Center here at USIP and I want to extend a warm welcome to US Ambassador at Large for global criminal justice Beth Van Schaak, triple M head, Katerine Markey-Uhel and Syrian Justice and Accountability Center Director Mohammed Ab Abdullah and thank them for joining us today. I also want to thank Mona Jacobian, senior advisor here at USIP for moderating the discussion. USIP was established by the US Congress in 1984 as an independent, non-partisan, national institution dedicated to preventing, mitigating, and resolving conflict without becoming violent abroad. USIP recognizes that justice and accountability are essential to American peace building. USIP engages with policymakers, practitioners, and experts to support effective documentation, investigation, and prosecution of atrocities, war crimes, crimes against humanities, and genocide. Throughout the institute's history, USIP has both led and supported US efforts to prevent and respond to mass atrocities, including co-chairing the 2009 Genocide Prevention Task Force, which has provided the broad framework for US atrocity prevention and response policy. Since 2011, USIP has supported building the capacity of Syrian civil society, organizations, and local peace building initiatives, and convened and informed policy discussions to help resolve the conflict and build peace. This USIP continuously tries to bring attention to the conflict in Syria. This year, the institute will recognize the work of a woman from Syria as a finalist in the USIP Women's Building Peace Award. The international impartial and independent mechanism, first of its kind investigative body, has played a critical role collecting and analyzing evidence of crimes in Syria. The Triple IM has created strong relationships with civil society documenters and prosecutors as part of its mandate. These relationships have resulted in criminal prosecutions against former Assad regime actors, which are an important step forward for accountability and the testimony to the conviction of the organization supporting these processes. The Triple IM's work has only become even more essential as parties to the conflict have continued to subject to be subjected civilians to indiscriminate attacks, unlawful detention, torture, and enforced disappearances. And with that, I'll turn it over to Mona for leading the discussion today. Thank you, Mona. As we approach the 12th anniversary of the Syrian uprising this coming March, the Syrian people continue to suffer through unspeakable atrocities at the hands of the Assad regime with unfortunately little to show with respect to justice and accountability. Today's discussion of the Triple IM's role as a justice facilitator and how the U.S. and civil society can help deliver justice for Syrians is therefore incredibly important, particularly as Syria has disappeared a bit from the headlines of the news that in no way diminishes the severity of the challenge. Let me begin by introducing our speakers. Sitting in the center, Ambassador Beth Vanskak was sworn in as U.S. Ambassador at large for global criminal justice this past March. She advises the Secretary of State and other department leadership on issues related to the prevention of and response to atrocity crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Ambassador Vanskak was previously the Leah Kaplan visiting professor in human rights at Stanford Law School where she directed Stanford's International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic. She previously taught international human rights at the Santa Clara University School of Law and served as the academic advisor to the U.S. Interagency Delegation to the ICC Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda. Since 2017, Catherine Marquis-Huel has served as the head of the first head of the international impartial and independent mechanism to assist in the investigation and prosecution of persons responsible for the most serious crimes under international law committed in the Syrian Arab Republic since March of 2011, the triple IM. Prior to her current position, Ms. Marquis-Huel was the ombudsperson for the Security Council Committee concerning the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, al-Qaeda, and associated individuals, groups, and entities. Muhammad al-Abdallah is the founding director of the Syria Justice and Accountability Center, or SJAC, where he develops and leads the organization's strategic vision and supports project implementation. At SJAC, Muhammad is involved in transitional justice projects and the missing persons portfolio. He received his Bachelor of Law from Lebanese University and his Master of Public Policy from George Mason University. He is also a former prisoner and survivor of torture who was imprisoned in Syria on two separate occasions for his work defending human rights and lobbying for political reform. Let me extend our gratitude once again to this very distinguished panel to join us here today and discuss this important topic. Muhammad, I want to start with you first, if I could. Because Syria has sort of come down out of the headlines a bit, help us understand about accountability efforts for Syrians. Where do they currently stand? What are the needs and the interests of the Syrian people in pursuing accountability for the crimes that they've suffered and perhaps even enlighten us on the scope and the magnitude of the challenge in Syria? Sure. Thank you very much for having me here and it's really a pleasure and honor to be in USIP. Thanks for USIP for hosting this important discussion. And so, honestly, pleasure and honor to be with two amazing women champions in justice and accountability efforts from when we worked closely and partnered in several areas of our work. I'll start from your exact correct point, Manna, that the Syria conflict and accountability has no longer become the headlines. It's not a topic, unfortunately, for a lot of governments, a lot of capitals. It's not a priority clearly for the current administration in the US politically. There's no special envoy appointed for Syria. And this is something that doesn't seem to be an area of urgency. Part of that is also because since the global ceasefire resolution passed during COVID at the UN, kind of the fighting lines have stalled and stayed in place in Syria. There's no active bombardment and killing in the way we've seen before in Syria. But let's take back a couple of years and backward and see how this all develops from peaceful protesting, government shooting in people, people picking up arms to defend themselves, quickly the country slips to an armed conflict and quickly neighboring countries start intervening. Iran starts sending Shia militias and fighters. Hezbollah starts deploying their forces in Syria. Shia militias from Iraq were deployed to Syria. Although they couldn't tip the balance because Turkey, the Gulf, is also starting pouring arms in Syria and supporting the uprising. And quickly Russia ended up militarily involved in Syria in September 2015. And that tip the balance militarily quite off because it's a massive military using air forces primarily as a weapon and fighting against armed groups and militias who are not really organized well or equipped. And there's a million other issues with armed movement in Syria. But if we look at the accountability sphere, but also look at the severity and the gravity of the crimes committed from shooting at protesters, peaceful protesters from the beginning to all the way when things become armed movement, indiscriminate shelling and bombardment of town by town, village by village, city by city that rebelled against the Syrian government. And that systematic effort was led by the Syrian government using well-known indiscriminate weapons including barrel bombs, just pushing a barrel with lots of TNT and lots of sharp nails from a helicopter and just lands wherever it wants to land and kill a lot of people. Barrel bombs specifically were responsible for displacement and destruction of big, big number of cities and towns. And then all the way to the Russian involvement where more targeted missiles, more precise and advanced weaponry and air systems were used to do the exact same thing, to this deliberately basically bomb civilians and cause terror in the communities and cause a massive movement of population which also Turkey sponsored through negotiation with the UN. And they labeled that as a passive safe corridor for civilians to be evacuated, but also it was eventually called out by the UN Commission for Inquiry from Geneva as forced population transfer. And that sad reality, the sad reality that the Security Council sponsored some of those resolutions in New York and you and in Geneva called them out on it and told them you contributed to crime against the humanity. Looking at that accountability, is not really something easy because Syria is not member state of the Rome statue, so the ICC could not practice jurisdiction over the crimes committed in Syria. The Syrian government doesn't have a great track record or trust or even credibility to open its own investigations inside Syria and have any domestic procedures. Although, Assad announced starting a Commission of Inquiry at the beginning of 2012, they didn't lead anywhere, disappeared, nobody followed the news of that. And the number of people killed under torture was exposed and the Caesar photos was astonishing. How many people ended up in detention facilities, the systematic way of killing them, the systematic way of torturing people, and also the systematic way of moving dead bodies to be buried elsewhere. So this all combined with the mass influx of refugees who ended up crossing the sea and landing in Europe opened a new opportunity for everybody, which is trying to follow those war criminals at national and domestic jurisdictions in Europe and several countries, relying on a very non-principle called the universal jurisdiction, which allowed lots of states to practice jurisdiction, a lot of courts in Europe to practice jurisdiction over crimes where not their nationals involved in committing, they were not the victims or not even committed in the soil of these countries. Of course, universal jurisdiction changed quite a bit during the last 20 years, partly also because the US pressured Europe to trim the universal jurisdiction during the Afghanistan war and the CIA torture program, but now it's re-expanded in the last couple of years with Germany seems to be one of the most expanded universal jurisdiction scopes that's allowed to prosecute a couple of Syrian war criminals who landed among the refugees who ended up in Germany. So quickly at the universal jurisdiction, there's a couple of pros and cons here, it allowed, and we've seen a couple of cases, the most notable one was the Koblenz trial where a former colonel in the intelligence appeared before court in Germany and had a life prison term in Germany for contributing or for actually committing the crimes of torture and disappearing people, but universal jurisdiction is limited in a couple of ways. The more limitation, the most important limitation is the limitation on diplomatic immunities, like you cannot limitation on prosecuting heads of states, you cannot prosecute heads of states at the national court in another country, simply that's how it is. And the second thing is the limitation to put people in trial where they're not on the soil of that country. So you cannot, you can issue a restraints and send it to the anthropol, and this is what Germany did with the three heads of, or leaders of the security agencies in Syria, but there's no trials and essentially you have to wait to arrest those people and putting the information all together, those people are in sanctions list, they do not travel to Europe to start with, less likely to land in European soil and be able to be captured and prosecuted. The heavily bombardment, and stop me if you want, the heavy bombardment in Aleppo and the lack of hope actually, nobody was able to do anything, a double veto on the attempt to refer the situation in Syria to the security council by Russia and China, veto the resolution, and this is even before Russia joined the conflict militarily. So Russia is much more inclined to veto now because they committed war crimes and they participated in those violations. So we ended up in going to something more innovative, the first fits kind, establishing the tribal IAEA, member states of the UN who felt handcuffed by the Russian and Chinese vetoed, wanted to do something outside of the security council, where both member states cannot veto, and hence went to the General Assembly to create something more innovative, which is, if I want to describe it in one term, it's a prosecutor office without a tribunal. What the work Catherine is doing with her team is documenting and building up cases and putting dossiers forward and conducting structural investigations on crimes committed in Syria, but without yet clarity to where these cases would go. Clearly there is a utility of those cases at the Universal Jurisdiction cases in European, which you will speak at, but there's also a big question about prosecuting heads of states, prosecuting the most responsible people in Syria, which doesn't seem to happen at the current status quo politically and also because of the national legislations in European countries. I'll end in two comments here that we've been seeing more and more openness from the US legislators about Universal Jurisdiction, specifically during Ukraine, because now we understand we could actually prosecute Russian officials elsewhere, even if they're not actually committed the crimes in the US or they were dual citizens. There's a couple of proposals in Congress and there's lots of debates publicly about it. This is something I know Ambassador Vashak is most likely will comment on, but this is something we'd love to see the US moving to the same direction of other people. There's current US extraterritorial jurisdiction related to trafficking and persons to torture, but I know you will speak probably on this. The second element is that the strategic litigation became a big thing in the work of the civil society where they jump to the sphere to file cases. Sometimes those cases does not have a direct legal impact of putting anybody behind bars, but more moving the debate and opening the discussion of the media and the civil society and some crimes. There's certain cases to go to European Court for Human Rights, although it's not criminal cases here. We're talking about civil cases and that's to hold countries like Russia, who was member to the Council of Europe or even Turkey for some violations committed while there's no ICC jurisdiction. There's an attempt by Netherlands and Canada to go to the International Court of Justice for a case against the Syrian government for having violating their commitment and obligations under the Convention Against Torture and that will end up with advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice. Nobody will go to prison, but that will highlight the case. Azraq ended up filing a communique with the ICC trying to take a grace to prison, basically the leadership of a grace for push backs of refugees and killing lots of Syrian refugees and that's a case that's not been denied yet by the Office of Prosecutor of the ICC, but has not been accepted. We think it triggered a lot of discussions including some of the discussion inside the Frontex, the European border security agencies that led eventually to the resignation of the head of Frontex and just recently there was an aguardian expose that tells the internal Olaf, the anti-fraud, anti-mechanism in the European Commission who investigated Frontex from inside and told basically and told the stories about their contribution to justice. So to quickly sum it up, we don't have a lot of accountability mechanisms of renews rating. We have a lot of good efforts by some member states, by civil society, by Tripoliam, by the Commission of Inquiry and we have a lot of crimes that's remained untouched. Thanks Mohamed. I think you've laid out a very important sort of grounding for us to pursue the discussion. Catherine Marcule, I'd like to turn to you. So the Tripoliam was established in 2017 in many ways to sort of get at a more creative way of getting to the issues around accountability and justice for Syrians. You've been there since its inception. Can you talk a bit about the progress that the Tripoliam has had to date in terms of seeking accountability and justice for Syrians? Sure. Mona, when you introduced the Tripoliam earlier, you spoke of its role as a justice facilitator and that's really, although these are not the terms of the resolution, that's really the spirit of this resolution. We've been built as Mohamed has also explained to collect documentation gathered by other entities to preserve such documentation, to analyze it, identify gaps, build cases and talking about progress in this area, the first progress I want to highlight is the establishment of a central repository of this huge amount of documentation which currently in our holdings amounts to 2.3 million records. Not every piece of those records will end up into court cases as evidence, but at the minimum there is a lot of lead information and there are indeed increasingly amount of material that we are able to channel through request for assistance from competent jurisdiction to those cases that Mohamed explained, build either on the basis of universal jurisdiction or extended forms of extant form of extraterritorial jurisdiction from cases. Without entering into details, we currently have a cooperation with 15 competent jurisdictions that are coming to us to ask us to search, to support their investigation, search our central repository and are asking for an increasing amount of more sophisticated and tailored type of support. So we are just to give you an idea of the volume because I think it speaks to on the one hand the amount of activism from the prosecutors and judges but at the same time shows how limited it remains in the face of the amount of crimes alleged in Syria. We have received 229 requests for assistance from this competent jurisdiction, 15 jurisdictions and this relates to 186 or 7 I believe, distinct investigations. We've been able to support already 117 of them. In 30 cases we didn't have material to share and the rest is under work by our team. We have investigators, analysts, lawyers, specialists of digital evidence management and preservation and we are increasingly able to effectively search this huge amount of materials of different kinds. That's what makes it complicated. We're talking just to give you ideas of what it contains. We're talking documents, government documents that have been exfiltrated either by insiders themselves when they leave Syria or by other persons present in Syria when for instance during the course of the conflict certain areas were being falling under the control of another party and it was possible to gather and exfiltrate materials. We are talking about CISA photos. You may have heard this photographer from working in a pathologist part of the military who was photographing bodies of mutilated bodies of persons submitted to torture. This material has been exfiltrated, has been made available to a number of prosecutors, entities and ourselves, has been analyzed by German forensic institute, the work that this institute has done has been translated by the 3M and with agreement from the German authorities can be made available to other jurisdictions. We're talking about materials consisting of videos taken by a number of activists but also a number of citizens who have been able to place them on the social media. We're talking about pictures. We're talking about propaganda from certain groups including Daesh. We're talking about internal documents to Daesh. This group has actually documented and taken internal decisions and procedures that are extremely useful when you want to reconstruct and establish responsibility for people higher the chain in this group. We're talking about a variety and a amount of materials which are difficult to search effectively. The 3M has invested in systems but also in personnel able to facilitate the search for instance of documents of bad quality. Sometimes we're talking facts that have been received and transforming PDF. Sometimes we're talking about how to extract text from videos, audio material and all of that can be really assisted with the use of artificial intelligence assisted by analysts. Since you asked me about progress I think I wouldn't be complete if I was limiting myself to the use of the central repository. We've been mandated to build cases and when I took the lead of the 3M I was wondering how could we on the one hand support and facilitate justice with those competent jurisdictions that are currently investigating crimes but also build funding blocks if you wish, analytical blocks for future prosecution. Mohammed has been expressing the wish that all of us have that one day an international court could take either the ACC or any other court with competence for the entire Syrian situation could become seized of that. That's not the case but if we don't build the steps now the day this becomes a reality which we hope well then we will have to a prosecutor will have to start from scratch. It's one thing to make available a central repository of documentation like the one I mentioned and it would certainly be extremely helpful but if on the top of it you've advanced your analytical work sufficiently to give a prosecutor a good grasp of you know the patterns of crimes all the contextual elements that you need to prove to charge co-international crime that trustee crimes for war crimes you need to prove the existence of an armed conflict of a certain nature for crime against humanity you need to prove the existence of a widespread or systematic attack against the civilian population and all this type of aspect of the situation are things that we have started an advanced analysis of. So with this jurisdiction that I mentioned earlier we've been able to not only develop but also share with them 31 analytical work products ranging from briefs to geolocation reports to expert reports narrative of of crime patterns in detention facilities organizational description of the functioning of these entities where detainees are being held and tortured or killed and all of that is something that on the one hand can immediately be detached to support ongoing investigations and at the same time build the blocks necessary for the cases that we build but also for a prosecutor that would be seized of the entire situation so that's progress in this sense and the the last progress in a couple of seconds that I want to mention is how do you get to implement a project like that a mandate like that well first of all you have to really be guided by an approach where at the center of which are victims and survivors and you need to engage in it in a two-way relationship with the many civil society actors that have been documenting these crimes that have been advocating for accountability and that have been liaising with so many sources so that was an important step and it's also part of the of the credit I think we we need to give the the triple M for for this building so thank you and that's a really actually quite an impressive record of accomplishment I want to actually pick up on the last point you made because it sounds like central to your mission is this coordination with civil society documenters and national prosecutors and others can you give us a bit more because it sounds like it's got to be complicated I mean it's hundreds of different relationships talk a bit about the coordination amongst these different documenters how does it work what are what are some of the challenges what kinds of we talked a little bit about you know how to help develop the the the skills of some of these organizations as they're working on these on this very difficult task of documentation give us a flavor of what that relationship is like sure so starting with the civil society actors and the documenters I think the first it sounds difficult it's more common sense and willingness than then and not really difficult but what's essential is to build the trust it's to engage and to be prepared to disclose part of the work you do because there is so much lack of information I mean we've spoken about the investigation a lot of this work is not public right I think we to date we've had at least I'm aware of a little less than 30 person convicted for atrocity crimes in in relation to to crimes committed in Syria and that's without talking about the number of people friend fighters who may have been charged for and convicted for participation in terrorist terrorist groups and activities but talking about atrocity crimes that's really the figure we have so the visibility of the accountability for for many of the documenters is not there and that's probably an area where we had this possibility of engaging and explaining the work we do trying to give feedback when that's possible on the use that we're making of the material that they share with us that's building the relationship with the courts as well to get permission to share certain information about how much of that has been used in court and this is a type of feedback that is extremely useful so we we didn't invent I didn't invent a formula in fact I was I inherited formula that had been developed by the startup team before my my appointment and it was a first meeting facilitated by Switzerland and the Netherlands of the person was heading the startup team at the at the time meeting a number of NGOs and explaining what this mandate may permit giving exchanging and hearing from the NGOs and when I started I was given a note that was giving me you know kind of main points arising from the discussion I thought that's a fantastic opportunity let's continue that let's build and have regular engagement and of course there is a certain amount of limitation that you face when you're doing that because you're not going to end up engaging with the broad spectrum of NGOs that are documenting or active on the on the serif file so you need to find other ways and we developed information bulletins but this platform that we call our lozan platform has really been a very helpful way to build a trust way way to know each other sufficiently to come to a point where you can start talking about the content of your work see how NGOs can help filling gaps for instance and we realized that we needed to supplement that we're on a with a two-prong approach the first one was how to engage with a broader spectrum of victim and survivor representative people were not involved in documentation but may need to know what's going on for accountability in Syria may share that perspective what are the expectation what they find is not being taken care of etc etc so we decided to add to the lozan platform an engagement with victim and survivor representative we started the first one in June this year and we will continue and we also wanted on the other end of the spectrum engage more in more sophisticated and more in-depth discussion with entities that are documenting crimes and can help us in the lines of inquiry that we engage in in filling gaps and that are that is leading to workshops we'll have the first one in November and we will continue that every year we'll have those three spectrum just a last point you spoke of the engagement with the many competent jurisdiction well fortunately there is already a fora for that kind of engagement which is called the genocide network that's a short name of the this initiative that is being hosted by eurojust it's taking place in the town of the hag in the netherland and it's meeting twice a year it's a gathering of war crimes unit if you wish investigators and prosecutors some investigative judges and entities that are contributing to accountability there is a public version of that and there is a closed session and we are admitted as participants to the closed session when it comes to Syria and Iraq Iraq because that that's handy with the dash group we actually have certain crimes starting in Iraq continuing in Syria and we also have bilateral engagement with the war crimes unit of course the genocide network is a it's a fantastic fora but there are things you cannot discuss even in the closed session so we do that in bilateral discussions we're receiving war crimes unit in Geneva in our premises so that they can meet with our team with analysts working on their request and sometimes we end up those meetings with very concrete ideas of how you can help the case better what kind of a unequal work we can develop next and and that's the way we do it and we also visit those war crimes unit in their own premises impressive it's a lot um ambassador van schaak from your vantage point as ambassador at large for global criminal justice can you talk a bit about what the u.s. has done to foster accountability for crimes committed against the Syrian people what's been effective why and what are some of the big challenges yeah thank you mona thanks everyone for being here and for usip for hosting it's great to be on the dais with two old friends who are doing amazing work um i actually started on this brief when i was deputy in this office at the very early stages of the syrian war i joined the office and secretary clinton very early on at one of the meetings of the friends of the syrian people that was happening um to try and mount a sort of international response to what was going on she announced that we would be supporting a multilateral um accountability effort it was sort of vague it wasn't clear what that looked like so we got together hosted a donors conference in rabat um morocco and raised a pot of money with the idea of launching some sort of an accountability effort and what came out of that was s jack and mohammed ended up um being the the lead of that and the executive director of that which was an inspired choice um that organization was also meant to help to capacitate other civil society actors and so one of the other organizations that we supported through s jack and then individually is the commission on international justice and accountability which as catrin mentioned was an organization that felt comfortable using syrian and other investigators who could cross the border into syria and x filtrate um usually regime documents but also in the end it ended up being iso documents and other documentation they tended to align themselves with the opposition so it was somewhat of an unbalanced collection effort but that was the reality of what enabled them to do that work and so they were able to bring out um reams of information that was captured or taken um from battlefields from prisons from governmental agencies that had been abandoned etc so the the whole ecosystem of civil society actors is there's a broad swath many are very victim focused and others are much more law enforcement focused and then groups fall in between and organizations like s jack operate as a really nice almost an umbrella organization that can connect some of these different actors very local to the more international we also supported the icc referral um resolution before the security council this was a french-led effort um it earned a double veto as was mentioned by um by russia with china in tow but that would have referred the entire situation to the icc the icc does not have jurisdiction over the situation syria on its own because syria is not a state party that's one of the jurisdictional requirements security council referral could have overridden that requirement but that was unavailing there is some residual jurisdiction before the icc and you mentioned one of your theories of why the icc could be able to work one would be based upon the nationality of perpetrators if they hail from icc member states so many of the foreign fighters that came from europe or elsewhere would fall within icc jurisdiction even if they're committing crimes on the territory of a non-state party like syria second and the the theory that um mohammad was pushing in a way was this idea of effects jurisdiction that if crimes that are happening on one territory have effects in another territory that might render jurisdiction there here we had the situation of migrants direct action by frontex and other actors potentially contributing to international crimes we've seen this um idea of effects jurisdiction in mianmar where neighboring bangladesh is a member of the icc of course mianmar burma is not but because so many rohingya have been forced across that border part of the crime is being committed on the territory of a non-state party so looking at places like jordan where people have had to flee violence so there's this kind of residual jurisdiction so far the icc as noted has been unwilling to move forward in part potentially based upon their own internal gravity threshold and the theory that the icc should be reserved for the sort of most serious crimes and those most responsible and so not necessarily focusing on very low level individuals or a tiny slice of the atrocities that are being committed but there's still efforts afoot to try and engage icc jurisdiction and that's really the only international tribunal that possibly exists there were lots of ideas put forth including some that we were trying to generate internally to create an ad hoc standalone tribunal that would have jurisdiction over syria none of those came to fruition for lack of some political will but also some concerns about the legitimacy of creating a body of just kind of pooling the jurisdiction of individual states without the imprimatur of the the united nations for example or some sort of a regional body and the arab league was not willing to pursue this either so that ended up being a dead end when it comes to cases in our own system as has been mentioned our international crimes framework is somewhat of a patchwork we have jurisdiction over the crime of torture if as so long as the perpetrator is present in the united states or found in the united states we have jurisdiction over genocide which may be engaged in some capacity in the syrian context but it's a very high standard there needs to be proof that the perpetrators acted with the intent to destroy a protected group in holer in part and so sometimes in civil war situations it's hard to meet those those criteria we do not have a crimes against humanity statute and we do have a war crime statute but it requires this nationality link so only if the perpetrator or the victim is a national of the united states do we have war crimes jurisdictions now as mohammed mentioned there are a number of initiatives now before congress and it was a very important hearing about a week ago before the judiciary committee where the doj and the dhs both testified about the gaps in our prosecutorial authorities and these gaps have been really salient and obvious when it comes to the syrian situation now at the same time we don't have that many perpetrators that have come here it's not like europe where perpetrators can hide in refugee flows they can take on new identities they can sort of be undercover and they get discovered at the local arab market or you know someone recognizes them on the street these very opportunistic sightings those individuals then contact law enforcement and then that triggers the initiation of an investigation we have very strong filters that make it difficult for people to come here and so that has kept many out and they're naturally probably wouldn't come here given our strong stance against the Assad regime now when it comes to these universal jurisdiction cases it's it's interesting because on the one hand they are episodic they are opportunistic some of the early cases focused on members of the opposition or on isis and so it felt very unbalanced where the primary perpetrator has been the Assad regime itself and its its agents and so the uj cases didn't really match that but then you had some of these other cases the raslan case and others where it was finally more senior regime figures being prosecuted for their involvement in a system of atrocities in industrial grade torture in the commission of war crimes on a systematic basis and so those even other individual cases i think they send very broad reverberations around the imperative of justice potentially sending a deterrent message signaling that the victims have been heard that their cases are being taken seriously and this really interesting we're seeing now public private partnership between civil society organizations that have legitimacy within diaspora communities that can work with defectors can work with the survivors can represent them before legal proceedings which are often quite alienating and hard to understand if you're in a foreign system then you have this multilateral institution that's serving as a clearinghouse as a justice catalyst as a source of in sharply analytical briefs that can jumpstart domestic processes and then ordinary you know domestic law enforcement that are not used to doing these cases but as katrin mentioned you now have these amazing war crimes units increasingly interlinked through the euro just genocide network sharing information techniques watching each other learning from each other and so particularly in europe the revival of universal jurisdiction and the development of genuine state practice is sending the message that these cases can be done that domestic courts can be a citus for justice and so i think many of us are hopeful that with some of these judicial or some of these legislative initiatives happening in our own congress we can be a bigger play a bigger part within this general system of sort of burden sharing and and being a being able to be a leader when it comes to this and much of this has been inspired by the ukraine situation most of these statutes will probably if they're enacted will not be retroactive and so they may not be able to help in this case necessarily but certainly for ukraine moving forward and then subsequent conflicts that may arise so of all these different things that you've laid out what do you think is the most promising step forward that you know the u.s. government could be playing is it is it reasonable that allocating more resources to these efforts is it playing that more of a catalyzing role even if a lot of the action is in europe with respect to documentation how do you see the you how do you see the u.s. role going forward and i'm fascinated maybe later we'll circle to it but the parallels between what we've seen in ukraine and of course russia has a track record that well precedes its its its behavior in ukraine we've seen it in in horrible ways in chechnya and russia and of course syria so we'll maybe we'll get to that a little bit later i would love to sort of have you share with us what do you see as the most constructive and promising steps forward for the u.s. i think there's probably three things we can be doing number one is continuing to capacitate really worthy non-governmental organizations giving them the resources they need to do what they're doing so well in terms of working with survivor communities in terms of sharing information with law enforcement in terms of working with defectors to convince them to somehow testify because sometimes those insiders are the key witness to be able to assist i think we can do more on witness protection so one of the key witnesses in some of these european proceedings as an individual who goes by the code name the grave digger he's like a caesar figure who was an insider being asked to do horrible things and escaped and now is telling the tale and is participating in many of these justice processes he however has been the subject of severe retaliation in europe his family has been attacked he's had to be going hiding he's had to change housing they've been homeless for a spell and so the international community needs to do more on the witness protection front not just for vulnerable recipient witnesses but also for those insiders that are taking that courageous step to give turnstates witness and to provide insights into how a system worked how chain of command worked who was the most responsible what orders were given who knows where literally in the case of the grave digger the bodies are buried i think there's more we can do on that front i think there's probably more we can do on information sharing with our own intelligence services to help our european counterparts bring these cases when they have them i would love to see us being more supportive in that regard and then providing diplomatic support for organizations like the triple im so originally they were funded by voluntary contributions that's not a way to to create a sustainable institution where you would have had to spend you know a good chunk of your time with your hat in your hand looking for um voluntary contributions and so pushing to have organizations like this be funded out of assessed un contributions was extremely important and i don't know that it's been emphasized enough just how important the establishment of the triple i am was because the security council was entirely foreclosed by the willingness of russia to veto any consequences of any real import when it came to its client state um the Assad regime and so in the face of this stability at the security council we suddenly see the general assembly stepping up and flexing its muscles and creating this very unique institution a sort of proto prosecutorial office an analytical tool a clearinghouse um that's able to to knit together civil society and law enforcement um and then also just be ready and for on into the future when cases are able to be brought and so seeing the general assembly step up like that has been really interesting with strong multilateral support cross regional it took a lot of states to establish this and it was i think a real testament to the fact that people believed in the in the imperative of justice and wanted to see things move forward knowing that the security council was essentially foreclosed and so i think the u.s. can play a role in galvanizing and whipping up the votes for things like this ensuring that you have the support and the resources that you need to continue to operate so mohammed i want to turn back to you because s jack of course has a critical role to play we heard about it from the vantage point catrin had offered for of the triple i am but speak a little bit from the other side from the from the civil society documentation side of this in terms of creating this sort of web of accountability and how do you view your organization's relationships with with triple i am and what works and what's challenging sure now this is very very valid question because from the beginning when when the resolution was put forward and voted forward and we realized i was one of the three people who were consulted in this among the organizations who worked in Syria we had a meeting at the catrin mission who was hosting a rotational meeting between member states we had 43 ambassadors and everybody was frustrated with the veto we just got on an ellipso and what can we do ellipso's under bombardment we cannot just sit and watch and let's proceed with lichtenstein was was leading in drafting the resolution for for the triple i am but then quickly this become a reality what nobody knows how it's going to end it up like yeah this is the first of its kind member states are encouraged they want to show russia and china that you cannot actually sabotage the uan system altogether so we're going to resorting to the to the general assembly but how this will work with the civil society let's build off experience oh there's no one this is the first of its kind let's try to work together so we worked clearly with with the rchr team at the beginning was in charge of of of debating the mandate working on the terms of references and swiss under dutch governments both put resources to bring the civil society to the luzan meeting a lot of efforts were put together and debating a protocol of cooperation we pushed as much as we can and the triple i am pushed back as much as they can because they want to protect their confidentiality of their information witnesses evidence and we want to know everything and we want to contribute to everything and we want to participate in everything we want to have a share in the decision-making process etc i would kind of balance ended up in a good equilibrium system where everybody is confident of the work of the other people we still point and they are saying oh god we don't know what you do you don't know your cases which is something it's a valid questioning of like hey we need to know more about your work but also from other point of views like yeah you cannot share your evidence with everybody you cannot tell the public the cases because people are at large might escape from this from this prosecution so the the relation has been going back and forth in a very good dynamic let's say at as jack we provided triple i am to a live access to our servers they sit with their team and janeva and they access our data system bayonet directly look what we did they take our evidence we share the regime documents with their intelligence analysis translation our cases our briefs directly and we've been pleased every couple of weeks we receive an email from triple i am saying yeah some of your evidence ended up being with a prosecutor in country x so because part of the agreement they should let NGOs know when they use their evidence which is something quite refreshing and and encouraging that our effort is making its its way up to to prosecutors and definitely we've been working with those authorities directly as well and so the relation has been going back and forth really well there's general expectations from the civil society and observations that a the cases of universal jurisdiction that worked much more publicly and stronger and faster and had more results the cases that had the civil society clearly participated on not only the triple i am and this is another call to bring more civil society to these cases the second question is and i know we debated this today was a endless platforms like endless times that we want to know what cases you're developing even if you don't tell us this case about x and z we want to know the thematic area of cases for example and the victim-centered approach is really important because part of that discussion brought to the light some ideas that you should not do cases because there's a good a good trade-off but let's do a case on uh suspects who are in europe or against the people we have evidence against but those cases might not be the most important for the syrian people because if you prosecute some one person who was involved in barrel bombs that will bring redress to thousands of syrian families but if you prosecute one person who was a prison guard in one detention facility that might might might be a big impact so from from our side as an NGO or as a syrian NGO like we want cases that touches and and the impact on the wider majority of syrians and that's that's important the second or the third comment is the terrorism cases in need because we see imbalance of those cases and we continue to see those cases being pursued in europe rightly so they have to put those people on on trials they have to put them for the crimes they committed and they're nationals of those countries it's a national security issue for lots of european nations all those ISIS members coming back home but we don't see prosecutors questioning them and asking them necessarily about the syrian victims we do not see prosecutors in europe questioning um any ISIS fighter about detention facilities execution orders about detainees the detainees at least 8 000 syrians melted when ISIS disappeared and got defeated by the coalition nobody knows where they're asked people there's of course at least 28 mass graves were excavated by first respondents northeast syria but nobody's pursuing those leads just recently the u.s in august had a verdict against one of the icis beetles the two of four foreign nationals british nationals who were specialized in kidnapping foreign hostages and they took four americans among other 13 hostages executed the four of them some of them in tv four two of the four beetles were killed in the u.s actions against icis and two were captured by sdf handed to turkey to uk eventually extradited to the u.s so the promise of no death penalty because it's not applied in the uk we ended up attending that trial requested information through the department of justice and to our surprise we received that information from the doj so we received answers from authorities in the u.s tell us about investigations we're conducting in northeast syria related to missing people to detention facilities to mass graves and we just issued a study last week that we were able to locate seven detention facilities and three mass graves based on observing the trial conducting interview with one of the beetles who plead guilty and offered cooperation and through information we like received from from the department of justice and this is something we're not we've been yelling and screaming and pulling our hair for the european prosecutors to do and they are not doing that but this is something could be endorsed by the tribulation because you work with them you're an entity definitely they will they will be able to hear you more and this is unfortunately because a lot of members say it's putting a lot of efforts and resources they have genuine commitment to accountability but then they do not practice the ministries of foreign affairs do not practice basically any oversight over their judiciary it's an independent court system and judges and prosecutors do what they can do according according to law so the relation with tribal iam has been has been going well one area where we kind of saw the tribal iam also can play a good role in the activities and it's the missing persons which is an area i think it's not part of the mandate of the tribal iam to be part of to be the mechanism searching for the missing people in syria although in the last year or two years catrin and michelle jarvis that the pth they made clear remarks that they've been clearly analyzing and tagging and and organizing the information related to missing persons could be helpful for missing persons there's a current debate among syrians and among member states about creating a dedicated missing persons mechanism or entity to search for those our our the point here is that this information is not being shared with the syrians of those societies being preserved with the tribal iam only and it's being shared by only entities the tribal iam wish to share with with its international entities not syrian entities we think there's a missed opportunity here of this information it's the same way we called prosecutors and say share with us this information and doj did we demand the tribal iam did that does that for the missing persons mechanism and for the record we had we had engaged unitad on this in iraq because because a lot of iraqis get kidnapped and buried in syria on ices days and a lot of syrians ended up being buried in iraq and we had a cooperation agreement with unitad where actually it's a both-way sharing unitad is willing to share with us we had the same agreement with that commission to gather to investigate and gather evidence set up by the k r g government in the north of iraq also a two-way sharing agreement it doesn't go two ways with the syrian tribal iam but this is something we continue to demand catri shall i demand it on your behalf so you know we're gonna turn to audience both here with us in the auditorium but also online some of their questions and comments before we do that catri and i do want to turn to you and and sort of ask a little bit more on some of the issues that Muhammad has raised in terms of the ability of the tribal iam to take on board recommendations and suggestions from its civil society you know partners and and how you're able to to be responsive and of course this idea of the whole new line of effort that's being devoted to the disappeared in syria the un secretary general recently called for a standalone mechanism to to be established what role would the triple iam play in coordination with that sure um maybe talking first about how civil society can can uh how it can be inspired or guided or uh not sure what the correct word is uh in our work well that's really important i mean victim learn survivors and many of them are active in civil society organization like Muhammad himself uh they have the knowledge that we don't have about the syrian situation they can alert us and that's why what what you were saying earlier Muhammad is so important that only arise if we're able to share enough of the substantive work we do uh with them and we are um i'm taking the remark that it's not enough i understand that but we are doing much more than we were at the beginning with disclosed the areas in which we work we have the structural investigations that tries to capture the the entirety of the syrian situation and obviously we can't progress on every front at the same time so we dive deeper into specific lines of inquiry concerning crimes and detention concerning unlawful attacks uh be it by use of uh chemical weapons or uh conventional attacks against for instance hospitals or schools etc so these are specific areas dash crimes we look at specific aspect of um the crime that the group is committed and in particular we we developed a brief to establish the existence of a systematic attack by dash members against the civilian population including on the basis of discriminatory ground based on gender um religion uh political affiliation sexual orientation and other discriminatory criteria we're now starting work on uh cups of the caliphate uh aspect and all of this is work we decide to develop based on two main uh input if you wish uh input from uh civil survivors and victims that are expressing their views as to areas which we need to to identify i mean the unlawful attack and the detention were obvious if you if you read uh analytical work that has been done by many entities including the commissioner inquiry but it came back each time in what in our engagement with victims crimes by dash the same but also obviously the needs as i explained earlier that we see national prosecutors having their own cases so we're trying to make sure that we are identifying uh work that would benefit both in terms of the uh situation of the missing that's again another topic which we had the intuition if you wish because uh many of us at the time have worked in other accountability uh entities and we knew how useful the information collected for primarily for criminal purposes can be when you search for missing person 25 years after the end of the trip the of the ic ty for instance for the former goslovia entities like the icrc and icmp for instance still come to the archives to try to find relevant information and the information in question wasn't ever tagged by the ic ty it was it's part of the archive so you have to search and it's complicated it's not been meant for that so we thought we had the intuition at the beginning that if we were able to adopt a methodology that would enable us to tag as we analyze this material we don't have the capacity to search every single piece in the central repository but when we our analysts review material for the sake of responding to a request for assistance or building an analytical block let's capture that and let's indeed try to to make use of it share it regularly etc now we had that debate so i've done so i mean my position has been we have limitation in this mandate right and we felt that we were closer to the heart of the mandate by sharing with either international organization mandated for the search of the missing or entities which which can be considered as close as possible to international organization now what i've noticed in the recommendation by the secretary general advocating for recommending that an entity be created by the general assembly is that the the importance that civil society actors be part of that be present and i would say in that way could benefit also from the material in question so what we i've heard i'm touching on an important issue it's absolutely correct that when you interview witnesses they may be insiders they may be fine fighters they may be people who have been victims or or participated in the commission of the crime there is a lot of information you could elicit from them that could be helpful to support the search for missing and i cannot speak for the prosecutors although i take on board the issue of maybe being an amplifier of the need at least at the triple m we've decided that when we interview ourselves which we don't do on a massive scale we do targeted interviews but of course we want to do that we want to capture that dimension and be sure that we're not missing an opportunity of of getting this kind of response when you build a criminal case you don't necessarily need it for the purpose of the case but it's so important and that's what we learned from engaging with victim and survivors you know when you have a mother a child that is looking for them missing i mean this is the first thing they tell you we like yes we want justice but you know the first form of justice is knowing what happened yeah and they don't only need to have the answer the ultimate answer of course that's important too but they also need to know what's going on what steps you're taking what is being done to help us find the answers so we feel we have a responsibility there and certainly we're committed to uh to commit on that and just to if you if you're low in comments as much as i wish i could let my fundraiser at at home unfortunately that's not the case and best was absolutely correct getting on the on the regular budget of the united nations was a great achievement and it's really giving us a core amount of funding the reality is that these lines of inquiry i described and the work to support jurisdiction we wouldn't be able to proceed at the pace we do if i wasn't able to make use of voluntary contributions so we we have received generous contribution from the us we will be again coming to member states too and we are determined to make sure that we can proceed with the pace that is needing to as i as i say usually not miss an opportunity for justice they are not that scarce they are not you know overwhelming these opportunities so we can't just miss such opportunities we need to be able to see each of them as they arise and even proactively to prepare for those which we all wish will come up at some stage so i'd like to bring our audience both here and virtually into the conversation jacob has a mic for those here in the room just raise your hand and we'll recognize you and then i think people can use on who are online can use the chat box to ask their question okay so and i would just ask please identify yourself before you ask your question thank you sure i think it'll be atlantic council um thank you so much force mona first for you know putting an amazing panel together um my question is related to the proposed entity on forced disappearance and missing in syria um muhammad you mentioned uh and kathrin as well the kind of like debate that is happening among syrians and among international actors on the on this entity um specifically um and the conversation is happening around accountability so member states are saying first the victim groups are saying we want information this is why this entity is very important we want to know if our relatives are alive or not where they are if they're dead where their bodies are member states are saying mostly you know if this is just information it's fine if it's accountability we want to know we don't want another triple i am but on the other side a lot of syrian groups or many syrian groups are worried about the accountability perspective specifically when it comes for example to forensics um what if this new entity basically gets forensics and then you lose the chain of evidence um what about information sharing for you know for example the other way with the triple i am i know the triple i am is open to sharing um information um you know for the missing but what about the other way around um where do you stand on this debate specifically muhammad as the syrian actor on the on the panel or the one who represents syrians full society why don't you each yeah exactly go ahead next table for the question this is very important question um we clearly came public supporting the creation of the mechanism with a big caveat basically we have some concerns about the way um the mechanisms is being presented by the secret original report and we've been working with a lot of member states and hosting lots of conversations with several member states about our area of concern unlike triple i am triple i am the evidence are in syria you can gather them outside and the jurisdiction is outside for a missing persons mechanism the prisoners are missing are inside syria and you cannot transfer those outside so for a mechanism to be successful and meaningful and bringing information either immediate release of prisoners or information about the missing and disappeared in syria it has to have some access to syria and somehow and if this mechanism is established through the general assembly and bashar asad decide not to let them in they will not be in so our line of of communication has been with member states simply that we need to have a solution before we create the mechanism we have to create the political will that will allow this mechanism to succeed and that political will is in the hands of multiple governments including the u.s. uh that's bashar and incentive to the syrian government to work with this mechanism we have the caesar act it's a very massive regime of sanctions but it has at the beginning says this act is enacted for behavioral changes purposes and here's the behaviors we want to change the stop bombarding civilians stop bombarding hospitals stop bombardment of uh etc and release of detainees if release of detainees happened would that mean caesar act could be suspended relieved a little bit i don't know what's the twist here that would allow bashar asad to be convinced this is something in his favor now there's a couple of points here and this is very problematic debate in the syrian space and i want to invite you and want to host a debate on this one because this is really really important um it's not happening this debate the family associations rightly saw they want their loved ones you are you deal with the politics we don't care we're mothers families sons and daughters of of missing people and we want answers and i grew up without my father for some part of my years when my father disappeared in the 90s right we know we want answers i don't care how you deal it you do it through general assembly security uh security council eu i don't care but also from other point of view we cannot ignore the fact that the recent amnesty happened in syria in may was influenced by communication bashar asad had with the emirates he went to abu dhabi he was requesting a line of credit from the emirates for funding and they told him listen this is not it's gonna happen there's sanctions we're not gonna give you easy do something so we can talk to you and we spoke to a couple of member states and i'm not going to name the state but who told us the emirates got in touch with them and asked them to comment positively about the amnesty and about about releasing or lifting some sanctions and that member state felt cannot make that comment because the us has not commented and the sanctions decision is in russia not in europe so there's lack of leadership unfortunately on this topic among member states and that's killing me personally because i spoke to eight governments in the last month they have i was like oh my god this is almost close to be brokered in a way that could benefit everybody and nobody wants to pick up the line on it and put their neck out for it okay the europeans will not speak about sanctions unless the us decide the us doesn't have much policy and leadership on cd accept the sanctions but they want to hide behind their fingers on this because there's not even a special envoy appointed for cd from the us administration and we're we're in this empty cycle of running around who will start and where and eventually some member states okay maybe NGOs and families can start demanding publicly relief of sanctions and some suspicious sanctions so we don't feel embarrassed saying it as member states but yeah this is how it works you call some families and ask them to say what the international community should do and this is the definition of lack of leadership and this is our problem we're supportive of creating a mechanism because all these gaps i mentioned prosecutors are not asking about the missings authorities are not sharing there is no central repository needs to be put with some you and entity who will gain legitimacy and authority and calling all these authorities and collecting information but i also worry this is a double-edged sword if we establish this mechanism we will not have a second opportunity on the missings anytime we will go knock doors and say we need to do something on the missings okay you have a mechanism go let it deal with it unless we do it right i think we should be cautious of how we're doing it and doing it right should involve creating a political will to the success of the mechanism the political will for the success of the mechanism is not there and the political will to create the mechanism is not there there's no member state willing to draft a resolution for it because it's somebody else's job serious not on the items of the agenda etc etc so this is unfortunate sad reality but also it needs to involve serians because serians needs to speak out a little bit about their expectations from the sanctions there's of course my understanding the sanctions in the us there's punitive sanctions where we want to punish those who committed war crimes and crimes against humanity and there's behavioral change sanctions where we in place we placed on Assad and his family and his businesses to force them to change course and let's see if they're gonna change course and what can we do with them and nobody is picking on this debate ambassador once got to have a comment on it it's a really important proposal and I think your question in the comments we've had so far reveal that there's a tension inherent to it between the accountability brief and the imperative of justice and accountability and then the acute humanitarian question of just getting the people information as to what happened to their loved ones and the way the Assad regime has managed these amnesties and others has been actually quite cruel I think to some families where they tell them their person is dead they give them a death certificate of some sort and then they release them and they drop them in the street somewhere and they have to find their way home and then they suddenly realize wait you've been alive all this time and then vice versa the person is alive and then it turns out that they were dead and so it's been done in this incredibly painful way and so there's only so much I think that documenters can do around revealing where the disappeared and detained are because they may have for example files from a detention center that date from 2016 so at least on that date certain we know that the person was here but you know how many years have passed have they been moved around have they been killed are they in a different center have they been released or they lost who knows where they are and so there's only so much that can be done by these people it's really the Assad regime maybe the only entity that actually knows where people are or where the bodies are buried if that's in fact the case and so coming up with a set of incentives to encourage Assad to participate in this entity is going to be difficult especially if there's some potential overlap with the accountability work because of course he doesn't want to contribute to anything that would advance the efforts about accountability against him or his henchmen and so we're caught in a little bit of a double bind here and I don't think we've really fully figured out how to how to resolve that conundrum Catherine do you have any additional comments on this maybe just to say that in an ideal world the state where the crimes have been committed would cooperate be willing to establish the facts and would be willing to find provide support to to and giving answers to the family well not in an ideal world so the way I see things is that well of course we need to continue every effort to get accountability you know when I'm writing to the mission of the Serena Republic to ask for information I don't get even an acknowledgement of any answer I'm asking information that including about crimes that the government itself has denounced I don't get any response I don't get even an appointment I don't think that this kind of refusal to engage to support accountability for any aspect of the Serena situation should prevent from trying to get answers to the family well not in an ideal world and I personally think that any entity created to by the Dora assembly or any other entity should have at its heart the mandate to engage with the government and work in a way and and and do everything that is possible to get that support because that's the only way you can go beyond just centralizing information that may be here and there in the triple M folding elsewhere if you really want to move forward significantly there so you need to create the conditions for that that's why when I was asked at the beginning could you be this entity of course not because we know the reality is that we wouldn't although we are acting impartially we're not seen as such by the government and therefore we are not the right entity but it doesn't mean that there shouldn't be an effort put there and I strongly believe that every effort should be placed on each part today it can work alongside without a lot of crossing you know if one day a political will is there including in Syria you can build bridges but we're not there we're far from that right yeah for sure Lauren did we have or or Jacob questions from our online viewers or others here in the room either one I know I have a question that I'd like to put actually to to Ambassador Vanskak if if while we're waiting um sorry would you talk a bit we've talked a lot about learning across different experiences and again you you are you've been here in another capacity to talk about accountability in Ukraine can you talk a little bit about some of the learning that might be going in both directions both from the experiences in Syria as well as what's happening today in Ukraine and how that could perhaps elevate and and and put forward both efforts at accountability well we've already talked a little bit about Russia being an actor in both battle spaces and we are seeing the same patterns and practices being used in Aleppo and elsewhere being used now in Syria in in Ukraine and so that's a point of continuity I think between these two conflicts where the disjuncture happens is something that Kathleen mentioned which is that we have a willing enable national system in Ukraine there's the office of the prosecutor general and the US is supporting a project with the atrocity crimes advisory group to provide expertise to work side by side with the Ukrainian counterparts to bring as many cases as they can do with respect to witnesses and evidence and individuals in their custody in Ukrainian courts we also have the ICC which is engaged because Ukraine was able to consent to jurisdiction they haven't ratified the treaty but they've essentially consented to ICC jurisdiction so already we have two more avenues of accountability that we didn't have in the Syrian context I think universal jurisdiction cases will also be important for the Ukraine matter and we know that the Europeans are already very seized they're opening structural investigations which are sort of baseline investigations of a particular conflict they're opening particular more particularized cases as I mentioned they're very united they're meeting regularly to share information Eurojust has recently amended its regulations to allow it to be a kind of repository of evidence around Ukraine so there will be a one-stop shop so that states can much more easily share this without having to go through mutual legal assistance treaties or other mechanisms that exist but they're like a little more cumbersome some of the friction in the system is getting taken care of and so that's I think some learning so it's hard to compare the two situations because there's so much more so many more outlets for accountability in the Ukraine matter now we still have the same problem of custody over perpetrators and that is going to dog the international justice system wherever you go if they remain in the states that where they're acting and if those states are outside of the system we don't have an international police force that can go and arrest them if they remain in those states they're going to enjoy impunity and so it's only if there's some sort of a political transformation within the states that are generating the main perpetrators that you're going to see more broad based accountability and so we're going to be left I think with these very episodic cases where somebody happens to travel or they're suddenly persona non grata within their own system and so they're ousted or they decide they want to flee they don't want to be a part of this anymore and then they're found and the decision is made to prosecute them rather than have them be a state's witness and so these are that's a point of continuity is that this the problem of custody remains really acute in the system other questions jumping with two of our online questions one of the major challenges to documentation in Syria is the consecutive waves of displacement of victims and witnesses which makes follow-up difficult how has the triple I am worked to manage that challenge and then a second question some Syrian perpetrators may die before the establishment of a tribunal or before they're able to be brought to justice can triple I am documentation be used outside of a trial context to support victim compensation mechanisms Catherine why don't you take a stab at those and then please others join in well the the displacement obviously makes things more complicated but as you as your audience may not necessarily realize we are not able to to Syria we don't have access to the Syrian territory so our way of documenting and and regrouping the analytical the the documentation and analyzing it is by way of entering into contact with person that are outside of Syria as well as person that are inside of Syria sometimes but that we are not meeting physically in Syria so the displacement is part of the acquisition if you wish of the narrative of what happened to the to the persons who have been displaced and that's the same as when you try to document what happened to a missing person it's really about asking the right questions to a person who are witnesses and also asking the same questions to entities that have been doing documentation documentation work and when it comes to sorry the second question was can you just remind me quickly can triple I am collected documentation oh yes so we've said our recipient was a very exception of what would be you know an entity an international entity mandated to search for the missing our recipient bodies entities if you wish our courts but I've interpreted the mandate to mean that we of course primarily support criminal accountability before judicial organs we can also support accountability not of a criminal character that would basically arise from a civil case for instance as long as a recipient is a court or that would arise from processes that Mohammed described such as the one which is currently at the negotiation phase but may end up before the international court of justice based on the allegation that Syria violated its obligation under the torture convention so again these are processes which are not criminal in nature which may allow to take into account crimes or consequences of crimes when perpetrators are no longer available or not yet available in fact I would just add when we think about the field of transitional justice it really contains a number of different principles or objectives and one of them of course is always criminal accountability but then there's a whole range of other ones including restitution rehabilitation of victims including truth telling including lustration which is sort of preventing individuals who were associated with a prior regime from having important roles in the new regime and then guarantees of non repetition so looking at issues of legal reform institutional reform security sector forces etc now in my book on Syria I have a chapter that's called transitional justice without transition because of course we don't have a political transition within Syria and so there's only so much that can be done and the expectation would be that if there was a new regime that they would want to engage with the field of transitional justice to try and address some of these different goals of the field and one of them would be a truth telling goal and so I think all of this documentation work is going to undergird a sense of providing the truth of the causes and the consequences of the conflict how it has impacted regular people what happened to people where they are and I think this new imagined mechanism for the disappeared and the detained is part of that truth telling impulse to the right of people to know what happened to their loved one so they have that sense of closure and they can move on with their lives to know what the fate was and if they're still alive they can continue then to advocate for their release and so it's important I think to continue to invest in this work even if the outlets of criminal accountability may seem narrow there are all these other purposes that can be served by solid documentation analysis work with survivors etc that can be done by the by donors by the multilateral systems by other NGOs etc. Hama do you have any thoughts to contribute on this topic? No not really that was my comment of that transition justice would be would be the basically the documentation could be serving multi purposes not only criminal accountability and in fact actually even if we had a tribunal in Syria domestic or international or ICC eventually that will put several cases handful of cases tens of cases let's say but you had a vast big population of victims and survivors unfortunately and programming related to other pillars of transition justice are needed in Syria including restitution of reparation collective and individual reparation programs but also the evidence could be put together in non punitive necessarily non punitive programming like vetting and restoration just fire the ones and how committed crimes if you don't have enough evidence on them not debatification or just the ones who committed the crimes and so there's multi use for for such data and definitely we designate our data and documentation and database in a way that could serve multi purpose would you allow me one please quickly please just to I realize listening to to you Mohammed a new bed that one caveat which which is not unsurmountable but would have to be addressed is of course that we can share the information that we have consent to share right so we can't just decide okay well now we're going to open a new area and we wouldn't go back so we would have to find ways to make sure that this is accepted agreed upon by by the sources and sometimes the sources are no longer accessible but I mean I'm confident that there are ways to to address that but that would have to be addressed just one more thing to add I think a real challenge in the Syrian context and you can speak to this as well is the issue of property restitution so millions of people have left Syria and their property much of it has been seized and is probably being occupied now by insiders and you know supporters of the regime and so if there's going to be a genuine return of those refugee populations to Syria there's going to have to be a process by which those property claims are going to get resolved and I don't think this field of transitional justice has fully it's sort of an under theorized area of the field and we don't have great models to rely upon as to how to resolve those competing claims and so to have a genuine sense of return of normalcy etc that's going to have to be resolved and you know the Syrian regime is going to have to take the lead on that particularly because they've created a legal framework that has allowed some of this property to be taken well I think we're coming toward the end of of our time together this has been a fascinating discussion I mean for me it has elevated few things one is just it underscores the complexity and the difficulties that are inherent in the case of Syria it truly is one of an attempt to secure transitional justice in the absence of transition at the same time the ways in which all of you bring a passion to this work and a wrangling with the difficult issues I think gives hope that we won't miss an opportunity to find justice or to secure justice where possible I most I think I would like to take away from this most that the concrete suggestions each of you has provided as a way forward there's some actionable stuff here in this discussion and I think it's incumbent on all of us to listen to think and to think through a way to to carry it all forward so please everyone here in the auditorium join me in thanking our excellent panel for what has been a terrific discussion on securing accountability for the Syrian people thank you