The Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria was a de facto autonomous region of Syria that emerged from 2012 onwards during the Syrian civil war, particularly during the Rojava conflict. The final administration, before its integration into the Syrian state in 2026, emphasized gender equality and pluralistic tolerance of religious and cultural diversity.

Historic background

Early 20th century The demographics of this area underwent a huge shift in the early part of the 20th century. Some Circassian, Kurdish and Chechen tribes cooperated with the Ottoman (Turkish) authorities in the Armenian and Assyrian genocides in Upper Mesopotamia, between 1914 and 1920, with further attacks on unarmed fleeing civilians conducted by local Arab militias.Travis, Hannibal. Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2010, 2007, pp. 237–77, 293–294.Hovannisian, Richard G., 2007. The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies . Accessed on 11 November 2014.Jordi Tejel, 2008. Syria's Kurds: History, Politics and Society. Many Assyrians fled to Syria during the genocide and settled mainly in Al-Jazira Province. Starting in 1926, the region saw another immigration of Kurds following the failure of the Sheikh Said rebellion against the new Republic of Turkey.Abu Fakhr, Saqr, 2013. As-Safir daily Newspaper, Beirut. in Arabic Christian Decline in the Middle East: A Historical View While there have been Kurds in Syria for centuries, waves of Kurds fled their homes in Turkey and settled in Syria, where they were granted citizenship by the French mandate authorities. In the 1930s and 1940s, the region saw several failed autonomy movements.

General human rights situation under Baathist rule

The situation for human rights in Syria has been considered exceptionally poor among international observers for generations. At the onset of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, Syria's human rights situation remained among the worst in the world. No improvement could be observed since Bashar al-Assad took over in 2000 from his father Hafez al-Assad, who had acquired power in a 1970 coup. The Middle East director at Human Rights Watch (HRW) concluded that "whether Assad wanted to be a reformer but was hampered by an entrenched old guard or has been just another Arab ruler unwilling to listen to criticism, the outcome for Syria's people is the same: no freedom, no rights. Assad's record after 10 years is that he has done virtually nothing to improve his country's human rights record."

Particularly dire was the situation with respect to political rights. Many politicians of the region have in the past been political prisoners of the Syrian government.

One area where the Baathist government did advance human rights in Northern Syria was in social and economic rights. Agrarian reform mitigated quasi-feudal structures built on large land ownership in both traditional Arab Bedouin and traditional Kurdish society.

Arabization in Northern Syria

All governments since the independence of Syria in 1946, particularly the Baath governments since 1963, have pursued an often brutal policy of Arabization, leading to grave human rights violations in the ethnically diverse region of Northern Syria. In his report for the 12th session of the UN Human Rights Council titled Persecution and Discrimination against Kurdish Citizens in Syria, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights held:

Denying Kurds citizenship

There have been various instances of the Syrian government denying citizenship to ethnic Kurds on the pretext that they have fled to Syria after the failure of Sheikh Said rebellion during the French Mandate of Syria.Chatty, Dawn, 2010. Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East . Cambridge University Press. pp. 230–231. The largest of these instances was a consequence of a census in 1962, which was conducted for exactly this purpose. 120,000 Kurds saw their Syrian citizenship arbitrarily taken away and became "stateless". They were not allowed to vote, own property or be employed by the government. They received red identification cards stating they were not Syrian citizens. This status was passed on to the children of a "stateless" Kurdish father. In 2010, Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimated the number of such "stateless" ethnic Kurds in Syria at 300,000.

With losing their citizenship, the people concerned also lost many rights under the law. In its 1996 report Syria: The silenced Kurds, HRW described the consequences as "they are not permitted to own land, housing or businesses. They cannot be employed at government agencies and state-owned enterprises, and cannot practice as doctors or engineers. They are not eligible for food subsidies or admission to public hospitals. They may not legally marry Syrian citizens" and "they are not issued passports or other travel documents, and thus may not legally leave or return to Syria."

Suppressing Kurdish language and culture

The Kurdish language was not officially recognized, it had no place in public schools and was outlawed at the workplace. Beginning in 1967, school books excluded any mention of Kurdish existence. According to Syria's Kurds: History, Politics and Society by Dr. Jordi Tejel, "with the increase in literate children in the Kurdish regions, a tight surveillance system was established there, following the example of the Turks, by means of 'spies', to stop the children from speaking Kurdish among themselves. Children discovered in flagrant 'defiance' could be physically punished." While other ethnic minorities in Syria (like Armenians, Circassians and Assyrians) were permitted to open private schools for the education of their children, Kurds were not.

Neither children nor businesses could be given Kurdish names. Books, music, videos and other material could not be published in Kurdish language. Expressions of Kurdish identity like songs and folk dances were outlawed and frequently prosecuted under a purpose-built criminal law against "weakening national sentiment". Celebrations of the Nowruz holiday were often constrained by imposed limitations.

Discrimination against ethnic Kurdish citizens

Ethnic Kurdish citizens of Syria, no matter if deprived of citizenship or not, were subject to discrimination under the law regarding the right to own real estate. Ethnic Kurdish students and employees were frequently expelled from government institutions without any reason other than their ethnicity apparent or given. In particular among teacher training institutions, such expulsion because of Kurdish ethnicity was the rule.

The religion of Yezidis, a Kurdish-speaking ethnoreligious group estimated at 70,000 in Syria, was not recognized by the state. Thus Yezidis were not taught their own religion in public schools, but were forced to submit to teachings of Islam. In personal status matters, they could not resort to civil courts, but were also denied religious courts of their own.

Confiscation of Kurdish land and settlement by Arabs

In 1973 the Syrian authorities confiscated 750 square kilometers of fertile agricultural land in Al-Hasakah Governorate, which were owned and cultivated by tens of thousands of Kurdish citizens, and gave it to Arab families brought in from other provinces. In 2007 in another such scheme in Al-Hasakah Governorate 6,000 square kilometers around Al-Malikiyah were granted to Arab families, while tens of thousands of Kurdish inhabitants of the villages concerned were evicted. These and other expropriations of ethnic Kurdish citizens followed a deliberate masterplan, called "Arab Belt initiative", attempting to depopulate the resource-rich Jazeera of its ethnic Kurdish inhabitants and settle ethnic Arabs there.

Human rights issues with Syrian Civil War armed forces in the region

Syrian Government At the dawn of the Syrian Civil War, media reported that Syria President Assad had decreed to grant Syrian citizenship to an estimated 220,000 of the estimated 300,000 ethnic Kurdish de facto citizens of Syria who were "stateless" as a consequence of the 1962 census.

After the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, the government forces withdrew from most of the Rojava region in 2012, leaving control to local militias, notable exceptions until today being the airport and the area south of Qamishli and the city center of as well as a military base close to Al-Hasakah. Thus while all issues associated with the Syrian Baathist government – its human rights record considered "among the worst" in the world by Human rights Watch – persisted within these small areas, their extent was limited. However, during the Qamishli clashes of April 2016, Syrian Army artillery resorted to indiscriminate shelling of civilian neighbourhoods in the city, causing destruction and injury and death of civilians.

In an August 2016 report, Amnesty International claimed that nearly 18,000 people have died in government prisons in Syria since the beginning of the uprising in 2011, a figure that includes deaths in the prisons of government enclaves in Rojava, namely in the prisons of Al-Hasakah until the YPG overtake capture (and subsequent closure) of the juvenile prison from ISIL during the Battle of Hasakah throughout the summer of 2015, and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) overtake of the central prison (and subsequent closure) from the Government in Battle of al-Hasakah in August 2016, as well as the prison of Qamishli until its overtake by the SDF during the Qamishli clashes (and subsequent closure) in April 2016.

Syrian opposition militias

Most opposition militias — outside of the NES-associated Syrian Democratic Forces umbrella — are not secular but follow Islamist ideologies, causing the respective human rights issues in areas under their control. In addition, there often is an attitude of chauvinist discrimination against ethnicities other than Arab among such militias and their political arms.

A report by the UN Human Rights Council alleged that since July 2013, Al-Nusra Front, at times in coordination with other armed groups, carried out a series of killings of Kurdish civilians in Al Youssoufiyah, Qamishli and Al-Asadia in Al-Hasakah Governorate, the Jazira Region. During a raid by groups under the flag of the FSA, ISIL, the Islamic Front and Al-Nusra battalions, fighters allegedly killed a Kurdish Yazidi man in Al-Asadia who refused to convert to Islam.

A recurring human rights issue has been the indiscriminate shelling of civilian population centers under NES control by Syrian opposition militias (both from within and outside of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces umbrella). Such shelling has multiple times caused destruction of property and injury and death of civilians in Afrin Canton, and particularly severe destruction of property and injury and death of civilians in the SDF-controlled Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood of Aleppo. In May 2016, Amnesty International's regional director suggested that the attacks on Sheikh Maqsood constitute "war crimes". In mid-June 2016 the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces and Russia accused the opposition militias of causing the death of over 40 civilians in the month, and an accumulated 1,000 civilian deaths, through indiscriminate shelling of Sheikh Maqsood.

After their capture of the town of Jarabulus from ISIL in September 2016, opposition militias of the FSA labeled Sultan Murad Division published pictures of themselves torturing four YPG members prisoners of war, who were captured by the rebel group while, according to YPG claims, trying to evacuate civilians.

According to an official in the Kurdish National Council's Unity Party on 29 March 2017, "The Syrian opposition are against federalism and constitutional Kurdish national rights, and they want to delay discussing Kurdish rights in the future."

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant