For more than 100,000 women in Syria, it is not only emotionally but also legally impossible to put the war behind them. According to the United Nations and Syrian human rights groups, up to 150,000–170,000 people, mostly men, remain missing.

Most were forcibly disappeared after the 2011 uprising escalated into the Syrian Civil War, during which up to 1–2 million people are estimated to have been detained. Also, about 600,000 were killed and many ended up in unmarked graves. The war ended in December 2024 when a coalition of rebel groups led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militia — under the lead of current President Ahmad al-Sharaa — ousted Syria's longtime dictator, Bashar Assad.

"I am neither a wife nor a widow," 33-year-old Nora from Al-Dana, a city some 40 km (25 miles) west of Aleppo, told DW. The mother asked that her last name not be published for fear of retribution from her husband's family, as relations are strained.

"Fourteen years have passed since my husband went missing," she told DW. She has long since lost hope that he will return. However, she is also unable to move on because his family intervened in court when she applied for a death certificate.

Decades-old legislation

Until today, a cornerstone of Syria's legislation is the 1953 Personal Status Law. It stipulates, for example, that a missing person may be declared dead by a court when the disappeared would have reached the age of 80. A legal presumption of death can also be established four years after a disappearance if it results from armed conflict, military operations, or similar circumstances.

The law also gives male relatives authority over key legal decisions. For Nora, this means that without the consent of her husband's family to obtain a death certificate, she cannot remarry, inherit property, claim a pension or have full custody of her son. "My son has to seek their approval for any official document until he turns 18," she said, adding that her own signature is not accepted and her in-laws are not supportive.

"This is not a side issue," said Hiba Zayadin, a senior researcher in the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch. "With more than 100,000 people missing in Syria, their wives are left in a legal and economic void, and their children are denied documentation needed to access education and health care," she told DW. In her view, changing the situation for them has to be central to any serious conversation about transitional justice and gender equality in Syria.

A legal vacuum

Even though Syria's transitional government established a National Authority for Missing Persons, major reforms to family laws have been so far postponed.

"Given Syria's diverse religious and ethnic population, implementing a unified family law across the country is also far from realistic," Lena-Maria Möller, a research assistant professor at Qatar University College of Law argued in a blog for the London School of Economics and Political Science website. "A more feasible approach may lie in a diverse family law landscape that grants each major community a certain degree of autonomy, while still ensuring a cohesive legal structure," she said, adding that such an approach would align with the stated goals of Syria's transitional government to respect minorities and integrate all social factions. 

In the meantime, the Ministry of Justice ended the level of flexibility judges had in granting guardianship to mothers in the absence of fathers, Lina Ghotouk, a Syrian researcher and human rights specialist, told DW. Since December 2025, this amendment, also known as Circular No. 17, restricts legal guardianship of minors to a long list of male relatives and marginalizes the mother.

"This suggests a gradual shift toward increased discrimination against mothers and especially affects wives of the disappeared," Ghotouk said. In her view, this further exacerbates the situation of these women who remain in social and legal limbo.

Push for greater rights

The introduction of Circular No. 17 marked a turning point for the Aleppo-based activist Yafa Nawaf. "The law does not do us justice, including regarding alimony and basic needs," she told DW.

When the 39-year-old launched the initiative "My Children, My Right" on social media, thousands of women from across Syria joined. "We are all united by the inability to obtain even the most basic identification documents for our children except through a 'compulsory guardian'," she said.

"We demand that the People's Assembly — within the context of the new constitution — radically amend the Personal Status Law, specifically regarding custody and guardianship," Nawaf said. For her, changing the law is no longer an option. "It is a battle for survival."

At the same time, she and the other women are aware of the risk of a social backlash from society.

Kristian Brakel, director at the German Heinrich Böll Foundation's Beirut office, agrees. "While women bore a significant share of the burden during the war, and despite the momentous developments in Syria, there have been few changes for women so far." In his view, the problem lies not only in the legal system "but also in the mindset prevalent in many of the male-dominated government agencies."

Edited by: Andreas Illmer