Who is the Victim?
At first glance, the answer may seem intuitive, but closer examination reveals a far more complex reality, shaped by deeply intertwined political contexts.
Prominent sociologist Richard Quinney famously posed this question back in 1972, concluding that “the victim” is not a fixed objective state, but a social construct that exists only when society agrees to recognize a person or a group as victims. Since then, this question has become central to victimology, launching a wave of research addressing it.
The answer to this question in Syria, which is undergoing a sensitive transitional phase, remains vague, despite its critical importance to the success of transitional justice efforts. There is no consensus on who qualifies as a victim, nor has there been any serious or organized societal debate on the issue. Instead, the term is sometimes co-opted and subjected to the political identities and affiliations of either the victims or the perpetrators.
The need to define “the victim” emerges with the ongoing discussions around the draft of the transitional justice law in Syria. The proposed legislation aims to establish a comprehensive legal framework for the work of the National Commission for Transitional Justice, the body responsible for providing reparations and accountability for victims of the conflict of the past years. Without a precise classification of victims within the law, the legislation will be unable to address the varying needs of millions of affected individuals.
This article approaches the issue of defining victims from a technical standpoint. Through examples of mass atrocities committed by the Assad regime, it explores the issue’s pivotal role in ensuring the comprehensiveness of transitional justice mechanisms, including supporting civil peace, holding perpetrators from all sides accountable, compensating victims regardless of their political or social affiliation, and reforming state institutions to ensure non-recurrence of violations.
General and specific definitions
The prevailing definition of victims in the context of major human rights violations refers to individuals who have suffered physical, psychological, or economic harm, or have been deprived of fundamental rights as a result of criminal acts or abuse of power. A person is considered a victim regardless of whether the perpetrator is identified, apprehended, or prosecuted. The concept extends to include immediate family members and those harmed while assisting the victim or attempting to prevent the abuse. Other definitions of victims appear in the context of the right to remedy and reparation, or international conventions specific to certain crimes, such as that of enforced disappearance.
In the Syrian context, the definition of victims functions as a specialized technical tool that authorities can employ to optimally deliver justice and reparations. This entails moving beyond a general definition of “victim” to a detailed roadmap linking the victim category to the type of crime that took place, the harm suffered, and the type of response required. Thus, victim classification becomes the lens through which the National Commission for Transitional Justice and executive bodies in Syria can clearly address the roots of the harm and its diverse consequences, rather than offering general, standardized solutions that may not meet the complex and varied needs of victims.
Achieving this requires transitional justice mechanisms to adopt a victim-centric approach, embedding victims’ rights and needs at the heart of design and implementation. Victim categories should ensure the inclusivity, fairness, and effectiveness of justice, and should direct reparations appropriately, while making sure that less visible or more vulnerable groups, such as victims of sexual violence and child soldiers, are not neglected. This approach allows the necessary distinction between individual reparation (like financial compensation for loss of home or interruption of work) and collective and structural reparation (such as reform of state institutions) aimed at preventing the recurrence of violations.
Not all harms can be addressed with a single type of reparation. For instance, families of those who have been forcibly disappeared primarily need to know the truth about the fate of their loved ones. Reparation here involves truth-telling, psychosocial support, facilitating legal procedures for the formal recognition of death and related matters of inheritance, guardianship, divorce, and marriage. It also involves identifying remains and returning them to their families to be buried with dignity.
Formal classification of victims also contributes to strengthening the efforts of victim associations and civil society organizations in lobbying, advocacy, and documenting testimonies. It also supports official authorities and newly formed relevant bodies in facing the immense logistical challenges resulting from the large number of victims and the need for significant resources.
Creating categories
Criteria for classifying victims include the type of crime, the extent of harm, the expected or required response, as well as the identification of victims by profession, gender, common characteristics, and so forth. Since the impact of a crime varies according to its type, the kind of justice required and the degree of response must also vary.
The comprehensive understanding of the extent of a crime’s impact, through classifying its victims from individuals to groups to society as a whole, supports the UN recommendation regarding the need to take measures that “avoid recurrence of the type of violation in question. Such measures may require changes in […] laws or practices.”
Several examples that focus on some of the earliest and most vulnerable groups targeted in Syria since 2011 show how the targeting of specific professional and social groups has affected society as a whole. And it is through classifying these victims, by combining individual reparations with comprehensive structural reform, that the country can ensure that transitional justice is inclusive.
Targeting the health sector in Syria
Medical workers were one of the first groups targeted since 2011. Physicians for Human Rights estimates that the Assad regime and its allies are responsible for 90 percent of medical personnel deaths. And while the direct victims were doctors and nurses, the impact of the crimes extended to their families and to the communities they serve. According to Doctors Without Borders, Syria’s healthcare system reached the brink of collapse in 2021. The absence of medical services results in serious consequences, including disease outbreaks, death, exacerbation of injuries, and forced displacement.
Here, reparations go beyond the individual case of the doctor, nurse, or family to include compensating those affected by the deprivation of health services, and institutional reforms that ensure the protection of medical institutions, health personnel, and unions, enhancing their role and freedoms.
Targeting media professionals
In 2024, the Syrian Network for Human Rights announced that 717 journalists and media workers had been killed since March 2011—including 53 who were killed after being subjected to torture—at the hands of warring parties and dominant forces in Syria. When media professionals are targeted through killing, arrest, torture, or intimidation, the impact of the crime extends from the direct victim to their family, and then to society in general by depriving it of the right to knowledge. Here, reparation requires classifying media professionals as direct victims of specific crimes (killing, arrest, torture, disappearance), in addition to societal or structural reparation by documenting facts and disseminating them to society, while also reforming laws to guarantee media freedom and protect journalists.
Targeting children and schools
Children in Syria have greatly suffered from the deprivation of education. At least 1,714 schools and kindergartens were attacked between March 2011 and November 2024 by Syrian regime forces, Russian forces, and other parties involved in the war.
The deprivation of education was the result of the Assad regime targeting students and their schools, armed opposition groups using educational facilities for military purposes, and the displacement and instability suffered by millions of Syrians. This reality necessitates preparing an appropriate response to compensate for missed learning, highlighting the need to create a special category for child victims.
Response design
The previous examples require authorities to apply a classification methodology that goes beyond numerical counting to response design. Instead of treating victims as a single block, the National Commission for Transitional Justice could use classification mechanisms that combine the type of crime (such as disappearance or killing) with the common characteristics of victims (such as profession or gender) to understand the extent to which the impact extends from the individual to the institution and society.
Given the massive number of victims in Syria, a prioritization system can be designed to maximize the efficiency of reparations. For example, priorities could be set based on two criteria: The first is the gravity and continuity of harm, where priority is given to groups such as victims of enforced disappearance and sexual violence due to the urgent need for access to truth and immediate medical care. The second is the “structural impact,” where priority is given to compensate groups whose redress constitutes an entry point for reforming state institutions (such as doctors and teachers), to ensure the restoration of basic services to society and prevent the recurrence of violations.
In this sense, setting priorities does not mean favoring one group over another, but rather building a chronological roadmap that protects justice mechanisms from being overwhelmed by the sheer scale of cases.
The Colombian experience
One place Syrian authorities can look for guidance is Colombia. After more than five decades of internal armed conflict, the country enacted the Victims and Land Restitution Law in 2011, ahead of its 2016 peace agreement with armed groups including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC). This law classified victims precisely and comprehensively; it did not stop at a theoretical definition but established clear legal categories, each entailing a different package of reparation rights.
The Syrian case intersects with the Colombian one in the massive numbers of victims and the diversity of violations. Colombia dealt with this problem by establishing the National Victims Registry as a tool for managing response. In the registry, victims were classified into dedicated lists, and the nature of compensation allocated to the victim differed based on this classification.
Categories included death, enforced disappearance, disability, rape, torture, injuries, forced displacement, sexual violence, kidnapping, forced recruitment, arbitrary detention, minors, and undocumented persons. Beneficiary categories also included family members of the deceased or missing, including spouses, children, and parents.
By the end of 2025, the Unit for the Victims had processed 16 million requests for about 9 million people, 13 years after starting its operations.
Beyond the general definition
To ensure that victim classification effectively serves the role outlined above, the National Commission for Transitional Justice should establish a specialized unit for managing reparations, with legal experts, experts in victimology, and data analysts, among others. This unit should be established based on consultations with victim groups, Syrian civil society organizations, and relevant UN mechanisms.
Furthermore, the definition of victims and their categories must be included in the transitional justice law in a clear manner, leaving no room for political interpretation based on the identity of perpetrators, or the political, social, or ethnic affiliation of victims. One way to do it is to define victims based on the criminal act and the harm, not based on the identity of the perpetrator or the victim.
The law should also shield the reparations unit against government and political interference, and should ensure that it is managed by independent technical experts. Incorporating the classification of professional categories into the legal framework would institutionalize justice for affected groups and sectors, and ensure redress for individuals on the basis of universal human rights standards, transcending divisions rooted in identity or affiliation.
Mansour al-Omari is a Syrian human rights defender and legal researcher holding an LLM in Transitional Justice and Conflict. His work focuses on translating justice frameworks into policies, real life practices, and institutional reforms in post-conflict contexts.