Syria’s Emerging Local Administratons

Integrity’s Tristan Salmon hosted a workshop at a joint event on the 12th of February 2013 held by openSecurity & the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (NOREF) titled “Syria’s Peace: What, how, when?”.
The workshop focused on Syria’s emerging civil administrations, the focus of ongoing research for Integrity.

Following a presentation on the structures, challenges and dynamics facing these emerging administrations a general discussion was held with participants including representatives from the Foreign Office, Saferworld, Amnesty, Conciliation Resources, the London School of Economics, Transnational Crisis Project and Chatham House.

The group was asked to come up with practical measures that could support the new local administration councils. During the final plenary discussion Tristan presented six points proposed from the group:

1. More research needs to be done on local administrations and in general more analysis is needed at a local level.
2. The local administration councils need practical support (finance, training, resources) to develop their structures. This could be done through the National Coalition, but there are other avenues.
3. Coordination between local administrations and militant groups needs to be encouraged through more locally driven mediation.
4. Administrations and militant groups must be engaged jointly to provide security, local governance and basic services to communities.
5. Syrians have a long history of self-governance from well before the uprising, as regime structures did not operate effectively across families and tribes. Future programmes looking at justice reform should be based on the strength of these conventions.
6. The day after has come and gone for many communities in liberated areas. There is now a need to focus on interventions to support security, provide immediate relief and investment to stimulate economic activity.