The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) emerged in 2011 as an independent human rights organization documenting human rights violations in Syria since the uprising against the Assad regime. Since its inception, it has published regular reports, promoting conditions for human rights and advocating for transitional justice, accountability and democratic change. It remains one of the most frequently cited organizations by the US State Department on Syria and has very publicly called for foreign intervention in Syria.

On March 11, 2025, the SNHR published a preliminary report documenting coordinated attacks carried out by “groups linked to the Assad regime” concentrated in the governorates of Latakia, Tartus and Hama. The report meticulously traced the movements of alleged-Assad loyalists and vaguely described that the efforts of the transitional government to pursue the attacks resulted in “extrajudicial killings … driven by vengeful and sectarian motives.” 

This publication came after an agonizing five days of horrifying reports, testimonies and videos emerging from the Syrian coast, with countless sources reporting on more than 1,000 killed since March 6 in sectarian-driven massacres aimed at eliminating specific Alawite communities. Many reports from the coast described civilians being humiliated, abducted or killed, with thousands of Syrians fleeing to Lebanon for safety.

The SNHR’s report referred to the 803 documented extrajudicial killings as “individuals” and “people” rather than “civilians,” and dedicated the majority of the report to the alleged attacks on government security forces, rather than the civilians they claim to advocate on behalf of. The report concluded by commending the transitional government’s commitment to investigate, “considering this a positive step that seriously reflects the transitional government’s seriousness” in achieving justice, even though the killings were actively ongoing — carried out, at least in part, by state security forces — at the time of publishing.

In an update published the following month, the SNHR explained that it was not possible to distinguish civilians from potentially plain-clothed opposition groups aligned with the former regime. The SNHR had never before hesitated to identify victims as civilians, given that it has regularly reported on the “daily death toll of civilian victims” in addition to its annual reports that explicitly document the civilian victims of the Syrian civil war. Just over a year ago, the SNHR documented over 230,000 civilian victims killed throughout the entire civil war — a war notably marked by several competing armed groups that often operated in plain clothes.

The SNHR report also alleged that the Assad regime was responsible for an astounding 201,206 of those victims. The Islamic State — an entity that has outright terrorized the region for a decade — was responsible for just over 5,056 civilian victims since its inception. Hayat Tahrir al Sham, the group now controlling Damascus, was found accountable for merely 538 civilian deaths across its entire existence. Not only could the SNHR distinguish between civilians and combatants with enough certainty to publish, but it somehow had enough reliable information to identify perpetrators. So what makes civilians elusive now? 

International standards of casualty reporting

At the foundation of contemporary casualty reporting standards is the Charter for the Recognition of Every Casualty of Armed Conflict, which holds that all deaths in armed conflict must be recorded, identified and acknowledged. The High Commissioner for Human Rights established international standards for casualty reporting. These standards and guidelines include the Guidance on Casualty Recording (OHCHR), the Every Casualty’s Standards for Casualty Reporting (EC), and the Guidelines for Documenting International Crimes (ICC). These documents serve as guidelines for best practices for organizations engaged in this work across contexts of armed conflict or deteriorating human rights. 

First and foremost, casualty recorders must establish a standard of proof that indicates the degree of certainty or confidence in any given data point. The UN typically employs the standard of “reasonable grounds to believe” that an incident has occurred. Transparency and consistency are necessary for the criteria of inclusion. Definitions of casualties and coding categories for victim status need to be provided. Where a firm, legal determination of the status of a casualty cannot be made, it should be clearly stated. Similarly, an explanatory rationale should be provided in cases where a determination was made regarding an uncertain case. 

All individuals considered to provide testimony should first undergo a vulnerability assessment. An interview will only proceed if the individual is capable of giving consent. Documentation of testimony should occur once the individual provides consent. The documentation should include biographical data, a summary of testimony and factual descriptions of any evidence provided, excluding individual opinions and irrelevant comments. A recording organization should aim to collect information on location, date, incident type, the number of killed/injured, causes, IHL status and alleged perpetrator, with violation details if possible, for any given incident it documents. 

All possible efforts should be made to identify the victims of an incident, as in specific contexts, naming victims is the only means of avoiding duplicate recordings, addressing denials of casualties by parties to the conflict and initiating accountability mechanisms under international law. Unidentified individuals should be included in the data even if not all information can be feasibly obtained, as there is a possibility they may be identified and verified at a later stage.

Finally and most critically, publicly released information must include a clear statement of methodology and definitions that are consistently applied and as inclusive as possible in the collection process, thereby building impartiality and broad confidence in the organization. Organizational transparency is explicitly required regarding the motives for recording, any potential organizational affiliations, the methodology of data collection and analysis, internal organizational structure and funding.

A comparative analysis of the SNHR methods

The published methodology of the SNHR begins with the organization’s main goals, which include preserving the rights of all victims through documentation, holding perpetrators accountable for verifiable crimes, deterring violations and supporting efforts in transitional justice and advocacy. This document also immediately clarifies that all participants are fully informed of the methodology and the purpose of their testimony and that all information obtained “will not be made publicly available” for security purposes — hence not publishing — thereby silencing victims’ voices. 

This represents an immediate deviation from international standards. At the same time, informed consent is a baseline in any humanitarian field; the ultimate goal of documentation work is to publish and amplify the voices of the victims. There is no explanation or rationale provided for this policy in the SNHR methodology.

In terms of definition and scope, the SNHR opts to define concrete terms — “massacre”, “detainee”, “forcibly disappeared person”, “citizen journalist”, “media worker”, “medical personnel” and “combatant” — and maintains definitions generally consistent with those standardized by the ICRC. 

Notably absent from the defined terms is the term “civilian”, the very category of victim that the SNHR aims to capture. From a practical perspective, this means that the distinction between civilian casualties and combatant casualties is not well-defined.

Earlier versions of the SNHR’s methodology (see Table 2), accessible only through internet archives, defined a civilian victim as someone killed by any of the listed parties involved in perpetrating violations within Syria. This definition notably deviates from the international standard, which defines civilian status by the absence of active participation in hostilities. The 2016 methodology stated that the documentation of military victims from the armed opposition was unlikely due to challenges in obtaining reliable information from conflict zones and the understandable reluctance of families to disclose such details. This victim classification was verbatim in the SNHR methodology documents through 2019.

The key deviation from all international standards is the SNHR’s explicit statement that “in cases of the absence of conclusive evidence of the victim’s status and resulting uncertainty over his/her classification as a civilian or a combatant, [the SNHR] registers him/her as a civilian”. Furthermore, no clarification is provided regarding what constitutes evidence of combatant status. The lack of definition of evidence for combatant status and the absence of a category for individuals of uncertain status could result in combatants being classified as civilians.

SNHR’s documentation processes

At this point, it is notably unclear how a report is derived from the source, what types of sources are utilized for corroboration, and what standard of proof is applied in the documentation process. When describing the use of open sources, the document says only that they obtain materials through “staff or volunteers” and the “internet”. The document details that they also archive photos and videos that may constitute evidence, but does not clarify the authentication of such materials beyond the use of metadata and comparing visual references. 

From start to finish, this document fails to adhere to the standards of international recording, leaving significant question marks around the validity of victim classification between civilians and combatants, the standard of proof for incorporating a reported incident into data and even the actual process of taking a report. To better understand how these international standards are translated into transparent data collection, one must examine the methodology and public operations of several comparable human rights and casualty recorders, primarily focused on the context of Syria.

Methodology of other organizations

Airwars

Airwars sets an international gold standard for civilian casualty reporting, explicitly stating that its methodology aims for a high degree of conformity to the EveryCasualty standards. In addition to reports of violations received from individuals to identify incidents for investigation, they rely on daily monitoring of local language media, social media and international/local NGOs. With the scope of assessing all known claims of civilian harm across monitored conflicts, Airwars explicitly defined the term civilian by the standard of non-combatants who were taking no active part in hostilities, unless otherwise specified in a given report. 

Following the receipt of a report or an incident flagged as a potential violation, the investigative team collects as much information as possible, relying on accessible footage of incidents, published reports (by the state, military or other CRN members) and on occasion, militant/terrorist propaganda sources that are directly pertinent to an event to sufficiently corroborate an individual report and subsequent information received about an event.  Every reported incident is geolocated, either to the exact location, which can be explicitly proven through photographic or video evidence, or to the nearest verifiable location (e.g., landmarks, streets, neighbourhood, village, town, city, province, etc.). Based on the scope and provided methodology, it does not appear that Airwars engages in interviews or direct engagement with eyewitnesses. Most notably, Airwars has a policy of naming civilian non-combatant victims whenever possible for organizational transparency, recognition of the victims and to combat denials of responsibility from belligerents.  

For every alleged incident, a provisional assessment is published of the civilian casualties based on the investigation’s findings, with events coded as confirmed or contested based on the available information. They also publish methodology notes that explain in more detail how their standard approach and methodology apply in different information environments. Surprisingly — or perhaps unsurprisingly — this degree of methodological transparency was not an outlier amongst other casualty recorders.

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights

On a smaller scale, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) was founded in 2006 to monitor, document and publish developments within Syria. It currently monitors political, military and humanitarian developments to provide accurate and credible daily reports. In contrast to SNHR, the SOHR is not a non-profit organization, and it does not claim to collect and analyze data in a formal capacity. In interviews over the years, founder Rami Abdelrahman has stated that he receives reports of fatalities from over 200 individual sources within Syria, with whom he maintains contact via mobile phones and platforms such as Skype and WhatsApp, with four volunteers inside Syria helping to report and collate the information provided by activists.

Operating like an independent publishing house, the SOHR seeks to publish factual, unbiased reports of developments on the ground based on independent, corroborating sources, including testimony from contacts within Syria, photo or video evidence and reports published by official sources. The SOHR also occasionally publishes the relevant content of interviews conducted, as well as photos or videos documenting developments, with care taken to anonymize any data that may put individuals on the ground at risk. This demonstrates that there are feasible measures to establish transparency in this context of data collection that do not put vulnerable individuals, witnesses or contacts at an elevated risk.

Violation Documentation Center of Syria (VDC), and the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC)

The Violation Documentation Center of Syria (VDC) and the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC), two organizations comparable in size and scope to the SNHR, further demonstrate how easily it is to fill the gaps left in the Network’s methodology. Publishing in cooperation with the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, the VDC focused on documenting violations committed by all actors in Syria, recording as much verifiable information as possible about each incident for publication in a database of violations, as well as in monthly and annual reports. 

The center’s investigatory process includes an initial stage of background research from hospitals, morgues/cemeteries, families of victims, media centers and official reports, as well as the collection of videos, images and any other forensic information related to the victims or the violation. Regular follow-ups are conducted to document new information or clarify existing details. The VDC conducts detailed credibility assessments of sources, and all collected materials are presented to data inspectors who ensure accuracy, correctness and completeness before supplementary information is entered into the database.

Similarly, the SJAC aims to document human rights and international humanitarian law violations in Syria by collecting interviews with survivors and eyewitnesses of such violations, as well as documents, physical evidence, photographs and videos of the violations. With their organizational focus explicitly on “not harm,” the SJAC stands out for its transparency in methodology, with complete training materials published openly on their website in English and Arabic to facilitate the high-quality collection, documentation and preservation of evidence for use in transitional justice efforts. 

In these trainings, each type of violation is clearly defined, followed by a series of ethical considerations to precede any interview and the standard questions relevant to documenting such a violation. They conclude with standards for maintaining impartiality in post-interview reflections, documentation and subsequent analysis, as well as detailed templates for obtaining informed consent.

Despite variations in their scope, definitions and classifications of the data collected, each of the organizations above provide considerably ample transparency around their documentation rationale, the procedure or methodology employed as well as broader organizational details, such as the working staff, advisory or executive boards, external partners and sources of funding — all details that are notably absent from the current SNHR organization.

Investigative findings: financial and organizational opacity of the SNHR

Unlike established NGOs, the SNHR does not provide a public listing of its staff or board of directors on its current official website. For comparison, Human Rights Watch, Airwars and most casualty recording non-profits prominently display their board members, ensuring transparency in leadership and establishing credibility through the impartiality of those individuals. In a document obtained from internet archives, which first appeared on the SNHR website (albeit under its former domain) in 2017, the following individuals are listed as members of the organization’s executive board (see Table 1).

Table 1: Individuals named as the organization’s executive board

Several of these individuals have been or are currently involved with parties related to the Syrian civil conflict in a manner that would typically be described as a conflict of interest, disqualifying them from such a board position. The notable and recent appointment of Mustafa to the Ministry position received no coverage in any SNHR reporting, as one might expect. The remaining board members and staff are mostly unlisted and untraceable, except for a few additional names that were found in connection with certain publicly filed tax documents.

Despite ongoing documentation activities from 2011 to the present, the SNHR was not publicly registered as an organization until 2015, when it was registered in both the United Kingdom and the United States under two separate incorporations. In its decade of tax-exempt status, the SNHR has only filed taxes four times: for 2016, 2017, 2022, and 2023. This chronic failure to file likely resulted in the revocation of tax-exempt status in 2019 for the UK and in 2021 for the US. For whatever reason, the SNHR was allowed to establish a new incorporation in the US the very next year, regaining its tax exemption and operating under this registration since.

The minimal information provided for 2022 and 2023 fails to clarify the origins of any charitable contributions or the organization’s financial operations. The table below outlines a comprehensive timeline of the organization’s history, highlighting the SNHR’s lack of financial transparency, alterations to its methodology and public presentation and the extent of influence its data had on the US State Department year by year.

The lack of transparency in financial operations and organizational oversight, combined with the controversial affiliations of the SNHR’s alleged board members, undermines its claim to impartiality. Its leadership structure and staffing have an immense lack of clarity, accountability mechanisms and even impartiality, given the close affiliations between several alleged board members and Qatar-based organizations and the groups now governing Syria. Unlike the various nongovernmental organizations examined throughout this piece — from Airwars to Human Rights Watch — the SNHR stands out for its lack of adherence to international standards regarding financial and organizational transparency.

Table 2 Timeline of Organizational History: The Syrian Network for Human Rights

Moving forward: a need to address the SNHR’s shortcomings

From the perspective of a humanitarian practitioner, the methodology and reporting of the SNHR are unsatisfactory at best and a blatant example of humanitarian malpractice at worst. The vague definitions of scope and key terminology, along with the inconsistent application of a flawed methodology, combined with the concerning organizational opacity detailed above, make it difficult to ignore or brush off conflicts of interest and blatant subjective bias in SNHR’s reporting.

The Syrian civil war, like any war in the twenty-first century, was fought on the ground and in the media, and the SNHR played a significant role in shaping the mainstream narrative surrounding the Syrian context for states, intergovernmental organizations and humanitarian organizations alike. The findings outlined in this report cast serious doubt on the independence and impartiality of the organization and, at the very least, necessitate a critical review of the SNHR’s internal processes, funding and the impact of its publications on engagements with Syria. 

As the country continues to oscillate between periods of violence and promises of a new future, the field of human rights owes the Syrian people integrity, impartiality and independence in the documentation of their turmoil. The definition of “civilian” status remains unchanged in the context of political elections. The Syrian people deserve humanitarians and documentarians who will see their humanity no matter who is in power.

[Claudia Finak-Fournier edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.