NEW YORK (July 23, 2026) — Last week, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) submitted a formal contribution to the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of Sudan, as well as a joint submission for Syria with the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC).
In their submission on Syria, HRF and SJAC raised concerns over systematic human rights violations spanning both the fall of the Assad regime and the transitional period that has followed. Between 2011 and 2024, the former regime killed more than 202,000 civilians and forcibly disappeared over 96,000 people. At least 100,000 people remain missing as a result of the conflict, and a significant proportion of them were last seen in regime custody. Since Assad was overthrown in December 2024, the scale of these abuses has sharply decreased but not ceased: arbitrary arrests, deaths in custody, and identity-based violence have persisted, including massacres of predominantly Alawi civilians during the March 2025 coastal violence and more than 1,700 deaths in the July 2025 violence in Suwayda, which disproportionately affected Druze communities.
HRF and SJAC called on the Syrian Arab Republic to repeal all former-regime laws that permit arbitrary detention, torture, and enforced disappearance; to enact a transitional justice law covering violations by all parties, including the current authorities; to protect mass graves and detention records and guarantee families’ right to truth; to prevent and investigate torture, extrajudicial killings, and sexual and gender-based violence; and to protect Alawi, Druze, and Kurdish communities from identity-based violence.
“For years, SJAC has documented the Assad government’s systematic violations against the Syrian people, including mass enforced disappearance and torture in detention. We are determined to ensure that Syria’s transitional government does not reproduce the same patterns. Our joint UPR submission with HRF calls on Syria to prevent violations, investigate those that occur, and ensure accountability for abuses, past and present. Demanding that the transitional government abide by international human rights law will ensure that Syria is free from arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and torture, and that the rule of law applies to all,” said Mohammad Al Abdallah, executive director of SJAC.
HRF’s submission on Sudan documented systematic, widespread, and gross violations committed by both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since the outbreak of war in April 2023. Both parties have carried out arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and torture on a mass scale: Thousands were detained in Khartoum in the first months of the war, an estimated 2,000 people were forcibly disappeared, and more than 50,000 remain recorded as missing. The gravest documented atrocity came at El Fasher, which the RSF captured in October 2025 after an 18-month siege, killing more than 6,000 people in three days in what the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan concluded bore “the hallmarks of genocide” against the Zaghawa and Fur communities, amid a starvation campaign that produced confirmed famine.
“From the lawyers of the Darfur Bar Association to the journalists still reporting under fire, Sudanese citizens have paid an extraordinary price for documenting the crimes of both the SAF and the RSF,” said HRF Chief Advocacy Officer Roberto González. “Both parties have made detention, torture, and disappearance weapons of war against their own people. Sudan’s review before the Human Rights Council is the moment for the international community to stand with the Sudanese people and demand accountability.”
HRF calls on the Sudanese regime to release all activists, dissidents and citizens detained for exercising their fundamental rights, to end arbitrary detention, to end torture and ill-treatment and bring detention conditions in line with the Nelson Mandela Rules, and to cooperate fully with the Fact-Finding Mission and the International Criminal Court on El Fasher.
HRF’s Tyranny Tracker classifies Sudan and Syria as fully authoritarian regimes. These categories are determined using a unique qualitative methodology that evaluates the quality of electoral competition, freedom of dissent, and institutional accountability in countries around the world.
Universal Periodic Review Submission for the Syrian Arab Republic
Prepared jointly by HRF and SJAC, this submission weighs Syria’s progress on the recommendations it accepted at its last review against a human rights landscape still shaped by the crimes of the former regime and the violations that have marked the transitional period since: arbitrary arrest, torture and due process failures, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and sexual and gender-based violence.
Universal Periodic Review Submission for Sudan
HRF’s submission measures Sudan against the commitments from its previous review at a moment when war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces has produced systematic and widespread abuses by both parties: ongoing arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and ill-treatment, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and sexual and gender-based violence.
