This excerpt comes from a 2007 interview with a human rights advocate in Syria—one of fourteen I have conducted with Syrian activists and lawyers in order to gain insight into emergency laws and human rights, to better understand official and nonofficial rhetoric about international standards of human rights, and to contextualize emergency powers and exceptional laws and courts within the region. My inquiry focuses primarily on the day-to-day reality of the “quasi-permanent” state of emergency in Syria, which the state has maintained since 1963. During these forty-five years, emergency laws have led to thousands of gross violations of human rights. Yet the state of emergency persists despite repeated calls within the country for urgent change and condemnation by the international community (i.e., the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations).

Two questions hover over my study. First, is the state of emergency the only cause of human rights violations in Syria? Second, how accurately do existing human rights groups present the reality of human rights in the country?

The Middle East may be the region with the highest concentration of authoritarian regimes and longest declared emergencies. Due to long political struggles at the national level, national security gained a primacy that subordinates almost every other aspect of potential democracy in Syria. The Syrian government has defended its emergency powers for more than forty-five years on the grounds that it is facing continuous threats of attacks or even potential war with Israel and the challenge of violent extremist groups within the country. The government also claims that “for many years, the Emergency Act has been applied only to a very limited extent in Syria and the martial law decrees filed with the Ministry of the Interior have become rare.”Footnote ²

Government censorship over all kinds of communication makes research particularly difficult. Article 19, an international human rights organization with a global focus, concludes the following:

Beyond the abuses of emergency power, the country suffers challenges to democratic transition, including compromised electoral processes and political legitimacy; centralization of local governance; corruption and lack, if not absence, of transparency; and of course a curtailed role for civil society and the media. Administration of justice is not only slow, but there is also widespread corruption and a lack of accountability, resulting in public distrust of the court system. Texts of an ideological and security nature, such as the Baʿth constitution and emergency law of 1962, constrain the legislative and judicial process and the consequent development of law and society.

Syrian human rights groups insist that the permanent declaration of the state of emergency has come to characterize the country. They picture life in Syria as lacking any sense of normalcy and producing a phobia that prevents even conceiving of any normalcy in the future. “It is true that censorship cannot be total. But, by its irrationality and narrow-mindedness it creates a phobia which paralyses all chance of gaining wide knowledge and all normal intellectual life.”Footnote ⁴ In choosing my interviewees, I have paid particular attention to Syria's rich social fabric of different religions and sects and the country's complex legal, political, and social history. Topics of discussion have ranged from the conflict with Israel since 1948 to the domestic struggle with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s and its consequences on civil society and human rights. My interviews reflect a great sense of despair and lack of trust in the government and the judicial process. Some informants, however, agree with the state on the root cause of this emergency, although they insist that it definitely needs “refining” to limit the powers of exceptional courts and expand freedom of expression. “Maybe reconsidering the law would be the best step to be taken . . . no need to lift the emergency,” said a senior lawyer/activist. “I do agree that there should be an emergency declared in the country . . . Israel is a serious threat on the borders and may not be ignored.”Footnote ⁵

As a lawyer, I find it distressing to encounter a legal system in which individual rights are subordinated—sometimes willingly but more often not—to the ideological goal of the state, namely, national security. Human rights abuses stem not only from the emergency but also from related, problematic political and legal practice. Syrian human rights groups have provided valuable reports naming victims, and they keep up a buzz as they campaign for rights and for change. However, the movement is young, and activists have yet to prove their independence from specific political agendas.

With an interdisciplinary approach to causes and ramifications of the permanent use of emergency powers since 1963, one of the central aims of this study is to understand legal challenges to democracy and reform in Syria in the light of the country's political process and social structure. This coherent consideration is requisite to bridge the divide between domestic and national efforts to meet international standards of human rights in Syria.