EXPERIENCES - Caesar Families Association

Caesar Families Association

Since the Syrian uprising in 2011, the number of detainees in Syrian Government’s detention centers have significantly increased along with the violations of human rights against them.

Caesar Photos: The military photographer, code-names Caesar, was working for the Syrian government for 13 years. Before 2011 his work mainly was to photograph people who died because of accidents or suicide. However, during his work, he noticed that a large number of the bodies were of victims of torture.

2020

Improve cooperation with Syrian Victims Associations

CFA have been working to improve the cooperation with other Syrian Victims Associations through meetings and active coordination to communicate with international stakeholders. This is the beginning of a new phase in CFA’s strategy and commitment to achieve its goals.

CFA believes that cooperation with Syrian and international victims associations is one of the main methods to amplify the voices of all victims of human rights violations in general and the voices of victims of enforced disappearance and torture committed by all actors to the conflict in Syria.

2019

The official registration of CFA in Germany

The Caesar Families Association was officially registered in Germany in 2019, as the association strives to accomplish its goals with the effective support of its members.

The association have been communicating with international organizations working on the technologies of DNA. Such technologies helps in matching the DNA of the relatives of victims with the one of the deceased victims in order to help the identification process.

2018

The Founding Meeting

As several families identified their loved ones in the Caesar photos, they joined each other in Berlin in the year 2018 in order to set the corner stone of the establishment of an association of the families of the victims who appeared in the Caesar Photos. This was the first step in their strive to justice, accountability and fighting impunity.

During the founding meeting, the families sat their goals and the foundations necessary for the next phase of official registration of the association.

The goals of Caesar Families Association are:

Work to retrieve the remains of the victims’ bodies in order to ensure burials that respect human dignity and families’ rituals.
Secure psychological and legal support to the families of victims and help them overcome the repercussions of these crimes.
Guarantee the rights of victims and their families, memorialize the victims, and restore their dignity.
Contribute to the release of detainees, the forcefully disappeared, the kidnapped, and pressure for the disclosure of the whereabouts of the missing.
Work to end impunity and strive for the establishment of a special court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Support a transitional justice process based on fairness and accountability.

Caesar Families Association

Experiences of other countries

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