Who We Are
Huquqyat is a civil society organisation set up in recognition of the absence of meaningful justice efforts for grave crimes and human rights violations committed in Syria since the uprising in 2011. The meaning of the word “Huquqyat” in Arabic embodies the essence of the organisation’s work, which is: “women legal practitioners.” Today, Huquqyat strives to work to achieve justice and accountability in Syria and across the SWANA region.
Values
Inclusion, Representation, and Non-discrimination: We respect and value our differences and recognize the rights of all our members to respect, equal treatment, and the right to engage.
Fairness: We believe in transparent decision-making, equitable resource allocation and diversity in leadership.
Participation: We actively encourage and facilitate the engagement of all members in the decision-making and believe that every member's perspective is valuable and should be taken into account.
Safe space: We believe in the need to build our organisation to be a safe space for women to come together, network, strategise and collaborate.
Shared leadership: Through a membership model, we adopt a shared leadership and support the affirmation of emergent leadership qualities among our members.
Our vision
A peaceful society rooted in dignity, equality where human rights violations are addressed through fair and effective legal mechanisms, ensuring justice for all.
Our mission
Huquqyat's mission is to advance gendered accountability for grave crimes and human rights violations committed in Syria through case building, legal knowledge production, challenging everyday injustices and engagement with justice mechanisms.
Our story
Our organisation was founded by a group of Syrian women legal practitioners and researchers who came together through a shared commitment to justice. During years of advocating for accountability for grave human rights violations committed following the 2011 peaceful uprising in Syria, the founding members were consistently confronted by the structural barriers of a male-dominated international and regional justice system. Despite deep expertise, lived experience, and frontline engagement with survivors, particularly with women and marginalized communities, their perspectives were often sidelined in formal justice processes and decision-making spaces. Members reported being often invited to attend training on justice and accountability that despite being informative and essential, these training, and the legal field more generally, consistently lacked a nuanced gendered perspective of how accountability processes impacted and included women in every position and at every stage. This first-hand exposure to the gendered gatekeeping of international legal forums highlighted a critical gap: while the Syrian conflict has been marked by widespread and systematic sexual and gender-based violence, these crimes are still underdocumented, under-investigated, and under-prosecuted. Including and beyond these crimes, women's voices, and gendered analysis more broadly, remain insufficiently represented in accountability efforts. In response, we established Huquqyat to ensure that gender is a core element in how we understand and address the crimes that were committed and their long-term impact. Rooted in feminist legal principles and a deep understanding of both Syrian realities and international mechanisms, we work to elevate gender-sensitive approaches to legal accountability. Through this work, we aim to reshape accountability processes to reflect not only the crimes committed, but also who gets to define justice. Our story is one of resistance to exclusion, confronting impunity, and ensuring that survivors are seen, heard, and represented in the pursuit of justice.