Syria in Transition

Tharwa Founders Ammar Abdulhamid and Khawla Yusuf, lead a group of Syrian opposition members on a visit to Capitol Hill, Summer of 2012, including from Right to Left: Kurdish Rights Activist Djenghizkhan Hasso, Kurdish rights Activist Radwan Badini, Syrian Muslim Brotherhood Executive Sami and liberal activist Bassam Alkuwatli.


Syria in Transition: a series of workshops on transitional challenges conducted in cooperation with The Public International Law & Policy Group.


Highlights from the 2013 workshops:

In 2013, Tharwa Foundation helped organize a number of workshops on Preventing and Mitigating Inter-Communal Violence in Syria, Negotiations and Mediation Skills, and Assessing the Root Causes of the Syrian Conflict.

The Syrian Transition: Towards a More Pragmatic Approach

On July 1-3, and in cooperation with the Center for Peacemaking Practice and the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, the Istanbul Policy Center at Sabanci University, the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation and with funding from the Dutch consulate in Istanbul, Tharwa organized a two-day workshop in Istanbul focusing on identifying the root causes of the Syrian Conflict. The workshop was attended by 15 Syrian activists from diverse ethnic, professional and regional backgrounds, who, together with 7 renowned international experts worked on identifying and categorizing the root causes of the Syrian Conflict. The workshop was meant as an initial assessment of the current understanding among Syrian people of conflict drivers in their own society. A larger effort is planned for 2014.

Here is a brief report on the workshop.

Preventing and Mitigating Sectarian Conflict in Syria

Between May and October 2013, and in cooperation with Public International Law and Policy Group (PILPG), Tharwa helped organize a series of 4 workshops in the city of Gaziantep, Turkey. The workshops focused on such issues as conflict mapping, mediation and negotiation skills, peacemaking, and formulating policy proposals. The workshops were supervised by over a dozen international experts and were attended by 80 Syrian activists from different ethnic, confessional, regional and professional backgrounds, most of whom traveled regularly from inside Syria to attend the various sessions. This was the most ambitious program conducted by Tharwa in 2013. The capstone event held in October 2013 was attended by the recently elected PM for the government in exile, Dr. Ahmad Tomeh. The following photos are from the Capstone Event which was attended by a select number of participants representing all groups that took part in the workshops.