Post-Assad Syria’s civil society expansion outruns state control rules
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Damascus – More than a year and a half after Bashar al-Assad’s fall on December 8, 2024, Syria’s civil society has expanded sharply through registration in Damascus, while the state’s role in licensing and control remains unsettled, says Deputy Minister Bahjat Hajjar. He warns that rapid registration does not automatically produce a strong civil society.
Key Facts
- After the fall of President Bashar al-Assad on December 8, 2024, organisations that had operated from previously opposition-controlled areas and neighbouring countries were told to register in Damascus, and their numbers have risen steeply.
- Under al-Assad, regulation of Syrian civil society was effectively run by the intelligence service, and perhaps ten associations were licensed a year, sometimes fewer.
- Bahjat Hajjar, co-founder of the Local Administration Councils Unit, now serves as Syria’s deputy minister of social affairs and labour, the ministry that licenses associations.
- Founding an association in Syria is now sometimes easier than founding a company, with simple procedures, close-to-nothing costs, and no criminal convictions as the main remaining condition.
Post-Assad Registration Surge
More than a year and a half after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad on December 8, 2024, the relationship between Syria’s state and civil society remains unsettled. Bahjat Hajjar, co-founder of the Local Administration Councils Unit, now serves as deputy minister of social affairs and labour, the ministry that licenses Syria’s associations. Under the old system, Hajjar said, regulation of civil society was effectively run by the intelligence service, and perhaps ten associations were licensed a year, sometimes fewer. After al-Assad’s fall, organisations that had operated from previously opposition-controlled areas and neighbouring countries were told to register in Damascus, and their numbers have risen steeply. Founding an association is now sometimes easier than founding a company: procedures are simple, costs are close to nothing, and the main remaining condition is that founders have no criminal convictions.
Wartime Civil Society Development
Mutasem Syoufi, executive director of The Day After, which works on democratic transition, said Syria’s civil society sector has spent 14 years trying to answer what role it will actually play. Syoufi describes a landscape assembled in layers: old charities, new ones tied to political actors in government-held areas, relief associations born inside the uprising, and rights and development organisations. The coordination committees were established in 2011 at the beginning of the protest movement. What organisations gained, Syoufi said, was the ability to work under pressure, a degree of institutionalisation that came with international funding, and the entry of large numbers of Syrians into the sector. What they could not build was a mature civic space, and Syoufi said one cannot speak of a developed civil society under conditions of war with no stable state.
Closing Crisis Vacuum
The capacity for civil society to respond to crises was built to fill a vacuum that is now closing. Bahjat Hajjar cautioned against assuming that opening registration automatically produces a strong civil society. “In countries that pass through transitions, civil society does expand and multiply; the more important question is what role it will actually play,” Hajjar said.
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Post-Assad Syria’s civil society expansion outruns state control rules
