The Syrian Accountability Project (SAP) began at the Syracuse University College of Law in 2011, shortly after the Syrian crisis began that March. Now, six years later, the SAP has released a “groundbreaking” report about sexual crimes committed on both sides of the conflict.

The report, entitled “Looking Through The Window Darkly: A Snapshot Analysis of Rape in Syria,” found that the 142 reported incidents affected at least 483 Syrian women and girls, according to an SU News release.

Corri Zoli, director of research for SU’s Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism, said the “real” authors of the SAP’s report are the juris doctor students.

From a historical context, Zoli, who is also a research assistant professor in SU’s Department of Political Science, said the SAP report is groundbreaking because the designation of rape as a crime under international law is still fairly new. On the scholarly side, she said it is a breakthrough because of its vast implications regarding women’s rights generally and for women globally, as well as for international humanitarian law and post-conflict reconstruction.

Zoli said the sample size of 142 rape incidents is a large enough sample size for the study because it is a purposeful sample and a more qualitative study. Additionally, the researchers are trying to get a portrait of the criminal behaviors involving gender-based violence and rape that are occurring in and around the Syrian conflict, she said.

David Crane, a professor of practice in the College of Law, supervises the students involved in the project in constructing a criminal case against the sparring parties in the Syrian civil war. Crane said a portion of the SAP is producing analytical tools similar to the latest white paper on rape in Syria. He said his team hopes that the aforementioned white paper will “bring a further understanding of the horrors that women and children undergo there in Syria.”

Peter Levrant, executive director of the SAP, said he administers two different divisions: the investigations wing and the registrar unit.

The project is revolutionary, Levrant said, because for the first time in legal history, a crime such as rape is being analyzed under three different legal standards. The first is the Rome Statute, which is what the International Criminal Court uses. The second is the Geneva Conventions, which Levrant said is “essentially humanitarian law and the basis of many criminal prosecutions.” And the third standard is the Syrian Penal Code, which is a domestic statute.

Levrant said the team “analyzes the unique crime, its trends, its frequency, the perpetrators, along with how and when the crimes occur.” He said the group distinguishes itself from other organizations because it analyzes these factors from a strictly legal standpoint and not just an advocacy standpoint.

The SAP is primarily focused on exposing these tangible crimes that can be prosecuted at both the international and the domestic levels to the world, Levrant said. This way, whenever the conflict ends, these crimes cannot go by unprosecuted or unpunished.

Zachary Lucas, the SAP trends analyst on the registrar team, said starting this summer, he will take over as the executive director of the project.

Currently, Lucas said his team inspects each individual year from the Syrian Civil War, examines the documents — which include crimes such as extrajudicial killings or torture — and composes and transfers the data into graphs and charts to portray how these tracked crimes have changed over the course of the war.

The team’s analysis includes a classification of where the crimes are occurring and in which regions in the country. The investigation also includes a breakdown by the individual crime to show what crime is more prominent and how the levels of violence have been increasing and decreasing.

Lucas said the research, data and work product that has concluded at the SAP prepares a trial platform for an upcoming prosecutor after the conclusion of the war.

The people who work on the SAP, Lucas said, do so because they care about justice for the Syrian people and others impacted by this conflict.

The SAP begins with a crime-based matrix that catalogs violent cases of sexual abuse, said Molly White, the chief registrar.

“The significance of the research conducted for the rape white paper is that it reminds the public that there is more than physical weapon usage and physical violence striking against the Syrian people,” White said.

This report accentuates that sexual violence is extensive throughout the Syrian Conflict and that “rape is often used as a weapon of war,” she said.

White said the students in the College of Law are the “backbone for the Syrian Accountability Project.” She added that while they rely on Crane — the project leader — the law students are the ones who “create, edit and compile all the work product.”

Published on April 19, 2016 at 11:14 pm

Contact Arva: ahassonj@syr.edu