According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, since 2011, the Syrian conflict has generated roughly 5.4 million refugees, while approximately 6.5 million people are internally displaced within the country, making it the largest internally displaced population in the world. Rebuilding Syria’s infrastructure, homes, and businesses will be an immense task, with cost estimates ranging between $250–$350 billion USD. The Syrian government and the international community have already started to contemplate postwar reconstruction and even wartime reconstruction, despite the ongoing fighting. This Note operates under the assumption that the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad will, at a minimum, remain in charge of at least what has been termed “Useful Syria.” Furthermore, it recognizes that reconstruction is a process that begins during war and that the notion that Syria will be able to implement a grand, centralized reconstruction project after the war’s cessation is an unrealistic paradigm. It is imperative, then, that policymakers, negotiators, and lawmakers representing Syria’s warring parties debate and negotiate existing Syrian domestic law, which appears likely to persist in some form, in order to anticipate and accommodate the rights of displaced Syrians and Syrian refugees.
A proper investigation of the obstacles to Syrian refugees’ achievement of appropriate post-conflict relief and housing restitution necessitates an understanding of the flaws in Housing, Land, and Property rights in prewar Syria. Rapid urbanization and the proliferation of informal housing spurred by neo-liberal government policies led to massive discontent in the country.
This Note analyzes the Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons (“Pinheiro Principles”) and argues that while they provide valuable contributions to an increased understanding of the needs of post-conflict societies, room may be allotted to tailor a more context-specific approach to remedying the rights of displaced Syrian persons and refugees. This Note proceeds to analyze and prescribe amendments and additions to existing Syrian domestic law so that it better conforms to the end goals of the Pinheiro Principles. Syria’s Local Administrative Law, Legislative Decree Law 107, if amended to democratize the institution of the Syrian governorship, could be an effective starting point that presents decentralization as a pivotal tool to empower sustainable reconstruction efforts for refugees and displaced persons. Its incorporation, alongside an amended version of Syria’s Public-Private Partnership Law, Legislative Decree Law 5, could safeguard against abuses directed against refugees’ and displaced persons’ rights under the Pinheiro Principles, strengthen ordinary Syrians’ voices in the deliberations concerning their country’s bottom-up reconstruction, and enhance and strengthen demoralized and underdeveloped local Syrian institutions.
In Libya and Yemen, the political transitions heralded by the Arab Spring devolved into civil wars. As a consequence of these devastating civil wars, constitutional reform processes which were intended to cement political transitions from authoritarianism to democracy were instead held hostage by the armed perpetrators of the protracted civil conflicts. As the political transitions in Libya and Yemen devolved into civil war, the constitution-making processes also devolved into conflict over the same outcomes that armed elites sought on the battlefield by force. These armed actors discovered a new battlefront in Yemen and Libya’s constituent debates. Comparative constitutional scholarship has emphasized the importance of participatory constitution-making as a post-conflict tool for political transition. However, ongoing violent conflict frustrates open, transparent, inclusive and participatory processes—the hallmarks of participatory constitution-making. The violent intensity of the civil conflicts in Yemen and Libya undermined the conciliatory objectives of participatory constitution-making in both countries. The undermining of conciliatory processes, in turn, imperiled the creation of consensus constitutional texts and risked the creation of “conflict constitutions” that would prolong, rather than remedy, the sources of conflict. In this article, the author develops a conceptual theory of “conflict constitution-making” that assesses the impact of civil war on constitution-making processes and the resultant constitutions, and applies that theory to the events in Libya and Yemen. The author’s theory of conflict constitution-making draws from comparative constitutional scholarship and posits that civil war transforms constitution-making processes from zones of conciliation into zones of conflict. During civil war, unless a political détente can be reached that commits armed actors to a consensual and participatory constitution-making process, armed power brokers exploit the process and drive constitution-makers away from accommodation and into conflict. Such a conflict constitution-making process produces a “conflict constitution” that enshrines rather than ameliorates the sources of conflict. An exploration of the impact of violent civil conflict on constitution-making is critical because, although best practice calls for the creation of a constitution only after the cessation of hostilities, political transitions are often fluid and constitution-making processes undertaken during periods of relative peace may continue during periods of extreme violence (as seen in Libya and Yemen). A better understanding of the impact of violence on constitution-making processes will better enable citizens, scholars and practitioners to assess, and if necessary, reform those processes as well as the constitutions created by them. While participatory constitution-making is the aspirational ideal, conflict constitution-making may increasingly become the reality in transitioning states. Accordingly, an understanding of how to best remedy a “conflict constitution-making” process is one of the goals of this piece.
This paper will discuss the political and social climate in Bahrain one year after the Arab Spring came to the country on February 14, 2011. The paper is divided into three main parts in order to give background and context. First, the paper will discuss the various iterations of inequality in Bahrain. Second, the governmental and international responses to the 2011 unrest and government crackdown on protests will be discussed. Lastly, a discussion will intend to tie the themes running throughout the paper together and discuss the future of Bahrain.
The Arab Spring sent shockwaves through the political landscape of the Middle East and North Africa and upended long-standing authoritarian regimes throughout the region in rapid succession. Among the many countries touched by the Arab Spring, however, Libya and Syria have been among the most profoundly impacted, experiencing institutional deficits that complicate efforts to resolve ongoing conflicts and now threaten regional stability.
The effects of such instability also pose a threat to the international community, making the plight of these two countries — and their ability to form stable, effective governments — a matter of international concern. In order to transition from conflict to peace and sustainable development in Libya and Syria, international actors will need to make concerted efforts at rebuilding the architecture of governance, a process which entails restoration of rule of law, dispute resolution, and core government functions. Such a process necessarily entails engagement with the civil law systems in force in these countries.
This article, therefore, explores the structure and substance of the Libyan Civil Code and the Syrian Civil Code, with special attention given to two of the most critical aspects of civil law vis-à-vis post-conflict reconstruction: the way each civil code addresses the formation of obligations and the regulation of property rights. The article explicates the formal rules that regulate the legal affairs of citizens in those countries; notes the applicability of those laws to post-revolution problems; explores those elements and aspects of the Libyan and Syrian civil codes which have made them such durable legal institutions; and assesses their ongoing, post-revolution viability.