19.11.2025
Syria Says Nearly 140,000 People Still Missing
The Independent Institution on Missing Persons in the Syrian Arab Republic (IIMP) is the first entity of its kind established by the UN General Assembly in June 2023. It is dedicated to determining the fate and whereabouts of all missing persons in Syria and supporting survivors and families of the missing. Fifty years of dictatorship and 14 years of civil war all but came to an end in Syria following the fall of the brutal Assad regime in December 2024. This allowed the IIMP to begin its work properly, most notably by gaining access to infamous detention centres where people were tortured, murdered or disappeared. People went missing in Syria for many reasons such as abductions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, displacement, migration or military operations. It is not clear exactly how many missing persons there are, but they are thought to be in the tens of thousands. Evidence of torture and mass graves will have to be carefully chronicled. Due process will have to uncover the elaborate former State network of secret police, prison and judicial officials who carried out orders and enabled the disappearance of thousands. More than 140,000 Syrians went missing during the country’s civil war, according to recent figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). The UN body has also documented at least 97 people who have been abducted since the start of the year.
Credit: TRTWORLD
Credit: TRTWORLD
Poverty deprives people of adequate education, health care and of life's most basic necessities- safe living conditions (including clean air and clean drinking water) and an adequate food supply. The developed (industrialized) countries today account for roughly 20 percent of the world's population but control about 80 percent of the world's wealth.
Poverty and pollution seem to operate in a vicious cycle that, so far, has been hard to break. Even in the developed nations, the gap between the rich and the poor is evident in their respective social and environmental conditions.
Poverty and pollution seem to operate in a vicious cycle that, so far, has been hard to break. Even in the developed nations, the gap between the rich and the poor is evident in their respective social and environmental conditions.
