Raghda Zeidan, head of Syria’s Committee to Investigate the Fate of the Sons and Daughters of Detainees and Forcibly Disappeared Persons, said the committee has identified 314 children who were placed in care homes during the former regime’s rule.
Speaking at a press conference held at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor and attended by Enab Baladi on Tuesday 6 January, Zeidan said 150 of those children have been returned to their families.
In remarks to Enab Baladi, she explained the mechanism the committee is using to document past cases. She said the committee is working through specific tracks, chief among them reviewing files kept at care homes. She described the process as difficult and complex due to the large volume of documents.
The committee has also reached an agreement with experts from the International Center for Transitional Justice, who are providing support in archiving and data analysis. Zeidan noted that this work takes time and cannot be completed quickly.
On communication with the children’s families, Zeidan said there is ongoing and continuous contact through specialists from within the committee, via social media and regular meetings. She added that a volunteer committee has been formed, with families making up half of its members, to take part in the committee’s work. Several committee members are also directly and continuously following up with the families of missing children.
The committee’s role
Zeidan told Enab Baladi that the committee’s role is not limited to reuniting a child with their relatives. It also involves determining the fate of the children and providing psychological, social, and legal support to the families.
She stressed that the committee will continue working with families until the fate of all children is clarified, adding that the previously announced figure of 314 is not final.
The committee has established a volunteer team to follow up on the record of children who have been returned to their families and to collect information on care homes between 2011 and 2024.
It is also monitoring the judicial track and providing legal consultations to victims and their families and advocating on their behalf, whether through engagement with international bodies or via social media.
“We worked over six months to collect information and provide consultations to the families of the missing,” Zeidan said, noting that the committee’s core mandate is to investigate and search for children who were forcibly disappeared.
She added that an international team will investigate this file, in addition to a committee tasked by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor.
Sorting and archiving teams
Samer Qorbi , the Interior Ministry’s representative on the committee, said during the committee’s press conference that families of forcibly disappeared children are being supported through the appointment of lawyers and the provision of legal consultations.
“We are facing complex files that require careful investigation,” he said, explaining, “That is why we are working to form teams to sort and archive information ahead of analyzing it. Field teams will also follow up on the children.”
For his part, Fateh al-Abbasi, national director of SOS Children’s Villages, said the organization has formed a committee to investigate and verify available archival documents. He said 140 cases of children who were forcibly placed in care were identified from the overall number recorded.
The organization was able to track 106 cases, he added, saying, “We are still pursuing inquiries and verifying the data with full seriousness.”
As for the challenges facing the committee, Moatasem al-Salloumi, director of the General Authority for Bayut Lahn al-Hayat (a government-run care homes body for children of unknown parentage), said the committee was surprised to find no reliable records for the children of detainees. He added that the former regime had classified them as of unknown identity and gave them different names, making the search painstaking and meticulous.
Returning children to their families
Zeidan had previously announced results related to hundreds of children of detainees and forcibly disappeared persons.
In statements to the official al-Ikhbariya channel on 27 July 2025, she said, “We were able to return children to their families, while the investigation process continues to uncover the fate of other missing children.”
She added at the time that the committee “has taken it upon itself to uncover the fate of children who went missing in care homes that were controlled by the defunct regime.”
On 10 July 2025, the committee had allocated two hotlines to provide legal consultations for families of missing children and to receive information and documents from those who have them and wish to submit them.
Zeidan attributed delays in the investigation and the committee’s work to the absence of an accurate archive and the damage to many files. She said the committee allocated an office at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor to collect, review, and prepare files, and to equip it with what is needed.
The committee, which investigates the fate of forcibly disappeared daughters and sons of female and male detainees and forcibly disappeared women and men, held a press conference on 8 July 2025 to explain the mechanism and future plans for searching for the fate of detainees’ children in the prisons of the Assad regime, identifying suspected parties, and setting out how the file will be handled.
Zeidan said at that press conference that the committee includes representatives from the Ministries of Interior, Awqaf, and Justice, as well as civil society organizations, families of the missing, and specialists in human rights and forced disappearance issues. The committee is chaired by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, to coordinate work, facilitate communication, and distribute roles among relevant entities.
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