Civic Spaces in Syria’s First Year of Transition: Challenges, Ambiguities and Future Opportunities

In the early post-Assad period, civic engagement surged as communities filled governance gaps; delivering relief, basic services, and inter-communal dialogue. That opening has narrowed since the March 2025 coastal attacks, which deepened sectarian divides and spread violence to areas such as Suwayda. Simultaneously, the transitional government’s rushed, centralised, and exclusionary approach, marked by selective disarmament and tolerance of allied armed groups, eroded trust and revived perceptions of injustice and authoritarian tendencies. Civil society organisations (CSOs) are reclaiming public venues and advocating for a new NGO framework based on acknowledgement rather than restrictive licensing to reduce political interference. Yet fieldwork and interviews indicate the transitional authority is sidestepping organised civil society in favour of one-to-one consultations, refusing to clarify CSOs’ role and instead elevating Al Mujtama’ al Ahli (“communal society”) grounded in religious, sectarian, and tribal ties. This shift marginalises civic actors and privileges loyalty and identity over organisational capacity and participation. Constraints on CSOs, especially beyond humanitarian relief, are tightening across three fronts: regulative (inconsistent registration and overlapping mandates between the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and the General Secretariat for Political Affairs); spatial (selective authorisation for public events, limiting justice and human rights work); and political (exclusion from core transitional forums such as the National Dialogue Conference and the Constitutional Declaration Committee). Since March 2025, restrictions have intensified, with authorities obstructing human rights and justice initiatives unless they directly support economic revival, often via security hurdles or stigmatisation. ] In addition to the previous state-led constraints, civil society actors also face a number of institutional challenges stemming from the post-Assad aid landscape. Those include major donors’ rigid due diligence requirements and their limited familiarity with newly emerged grassroots actors, which continue to constrain effective localisation.