A signature and five years
Published 10 October 2026
On March 10, Sharaa and Syrian Democratic Forces commander Mazloum Abdi signed an agreement to integrate northeastern civilian and military institutions into the state. The Kurdish-led force controlled a region whose structures could not be absorbed by issuing new uniforms in Damascus. The agreement affirmed territorial integrity while leaving implementation to negotiation. This was another distinct meaning of integration: administration, resources and local security had to move into a national framework, not merely a collection of brigades into an army. The commission's coastal report recorded negotiations continuing months later. The signature was evidence of an agreed objective, not proof that the government already exercised the promised authority in the northeast. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
On the coast, in Al Qabu, according to the report, some families could not bury relatives in the cemetery until March 12. The aftermath of March 7 therefore joined displacement, loss of infrastructure and delay in burial. Each represented a different burden that a simple count of fatalities would miss. UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
On March 13, Sharaa signed a constitutional declaration for the interim period. Its fifty-three articles supplied a framework after the old constitution had been set aside. The English text used here is explicitly an unofficial translation. Its provisions can be described without pretending the translation resolves every question of Arabic legal meaning. The declaration stated that Syria was independent, sovereign and indivisible and established separation of powers as a principle. Those commitments framed the transition as a national state-building project rather than the permanent division of territory among wartime forces. How power was distributed within that state depended on the articles that followed, not only on the opening statement of principle. Constitutional declaration, March 13, 2025, unofficial English translation hosted by ConstitutionNet
Article 3 required the president to be Muslim and made Islamic jurisprudence the principal source of legislation. It also protected freedom of belief, religious ritual subject to public order and the personal-status arrangements of religious communities. Arabic was the official language under Article 4. Article 7 guaranteed cultural diversity and linguistic rights while criminalizing calls for division, secession and requests for foreign intervention or support. Those provisions placed recognition of diversity beside strong territorial constraints. They mattered to communities debating decentralization because a demand for cultural rights and a proposal about the distribution of governing authority were related but not identical. The text protected the former without creating a federal arrangement for the latter. Constitutional declaration, March 13, 2025, unofficial English translation hosted by ConstitutionNet
Article 9 defined the army as a professional national institution acting under law and protecting rights. It restricted the creation of military and paramilitary formations to the state and placed weapons exclusively in state hands. Coming immediately after the coast's violence and the northeastern agreement, the provision addressed realities still unresolved. Many factions retained autonomy, while regional forces were negotiating the terms of entry into national structures. The declaration did not make their weapons disappear. It stated the legal destination of the process. Its practical force would depend on whether the government could bring diverse armed bodies under discipline without making disarmament appear to vulnerable communities as the removal of their only protection. Constitutional declaration, March 13, 2025, unofficial English translation hosted by ConstitutionNet UN Syria Commission, A/HRC/59/CRP.4, August 11, 2025
Equality before law appeared in Article 10, without discrimination based on race, religion, gender or lineage. Article 12 incorporated rights contained in international treaties and agreements Syria had ratified. Article 13 protected expression, publication, press, privacy and movement, including a citizen's return to the country. These were substantive promises in a state emerging from suppression and mass displacement. A returning refugee, a journalist and a family searching for a detainee could each identify a protection relevant to their circumstances. The legal significance was the possibility of treating those protections as obligations rather than discretionary favours. Implementation still required ordinary laws and institutions through which a person could challenge a violation. Constitutional declaration, March 13, 2025, unofficial English translation hosted by ConstitutionNet
Political participation and party formation were protected by Article 14, with parties to operate on national foundations under a new law. Work and equal opportunity followed in Article 15. Article 16 protected private property and allowed expropriation for public benefit with fair compensation. It classified natural resources as public property to be used for society. These commitments linked personal rights to the economic inheritance of the war: displaced people sought homes, households needed work, and control of resources was contested. The text provided principles but did not specify every process for recovering a seized house, compensating a loss or resolving competing claims arising from wartime displacement. Such disputes required institutions beyond the declaration itself. Constitutional declaration, March 13, 2025, unofficial English translation hosted by ConstitutionNet
Articles 17 and 18 confronted detention more directly. Punishment was personal; innocence continued until a final judicial ruling. Rights to defence and appeal were protected, and administrative decisions could not be made immune from judicial oversight. The state was to prohibit disappearance and physical or psychological torture, with no limitation period for torture crimes. Except for offences discovered in the act, arrest or detention required a judicial decision. After the inherited system's use of custody and coercion, these provisions represented clear formal restraints. Their application would require officers to recognize a court's authority before taking a person away, and judges able to examine custody without deferring automatically to security claims. Constitutional declaration, March 13, 2025, unofficial English translation hosted by ConstitutionNet
Homes were protected under Article 19. Articles 21 and 22 addressed women's rights and protection of children, including education and healthcare. Article 23 then allowed limitations on rights where necessary for national security, territorial integrity, public safety, order, crime prevention, health or morals. The presence of limitations did not erase the preceding protections. It placed considerable weight on how necessity would be interpreted and reviewed. A state confronting armed resistance could invoke security frequently. Whether that invocation remained bounded depended on institutional independence and the ability to challenge it, particularly when the person claiming a right was already held by an agency presenting detention as essential to public order. Constitutional declaration, March 13, 2025, unofficial English translation hosted by ConstitutionNet
The assembly's formation gave the president a substantial role. Under Article 24, he would establish a higher committee supervising electoral subcommittees. Those bodies would elect two-thirds of the People's Assembly; the president would appoint the remaining third. The arrangement was not universal direct suffrage. Its defenders could point to insecurity and displacement, but its legal design was clear even before implementation: the public would not independently choose the whole legislature. Presidential involvement extended beyond the appointed seats because the executive initiated the committee structure through which the other members were selected. The transition's representative institution would consequently begin inside an architecture designed by the same authority it was supposed to help scrutinize. Constitutional declaration, March 13, 2025, unofficial English translation hosted by ConstitutionNet
The assembly would legislate until a permanent constitution and elections under it, with a thirty-month term renewable under Article 26. Its responsibilities included laws, treaties, budgets, general amnesty and ministerial hearings. Members had immunity and could not be removed without a two-thirds vote. These provisions gave the legislature functions more substantial than ceremonial endorsement. Its effectiveness would nevertheless depend on composition, access to information and the freedom to oppose the executive. A power listed in a constitutional text could remain unused or weakly exercised. The declaration created an institutional opportunity for scrutiny while surrounding its formation with presidential influence that made the quality of that scrutiny an open question. Constitutional declaration, March 13, 2025, unofficial English translation hosted by ConstitutionNet
Executive authority lay with the president and ministers. Sharaa would command the armed forces, appoint and dismiss ministers and vice-presidents, issue regulations and represent Syria internationally. He could propose laws and object to legislation passed by the assembly. Overriding an objection required two-thirds of legislators. The same numerical threshold appeared in different places for different purposes, and should not be treated as a single blanket restriction. Its effect here was to raise the burden on legislators wishing to insist on a law the president opposed. Taken alongside appointments and command, the veto mechanism gave the executive substantial means to shape the transition even while the declaration named separate branches of government. Constitutional declaration, March 13, 2025, unofficial English translation hosted by ConstitutionNet
Article 41 allowed a state of emergency in response to serious immediate threats, initially for no more than three months. Approval of the National Security Council and consultation with the assembly speaker and constitutional court president were required. Extending it required assembly approval. These were procedural limits, not an unlimited textual authority to suspend ordinary governance indefinitely. Their practical meaning depended on the independence and operation of the bodies consulted. A presidency influential over appointments could satisfy formal steps more easily than a president facing strong autonomous institutions. The declaration's emergency architecture therefore needed to be read together with its appointment structure, not praised or condemned through one isolated sentence. Constitutional declaration, March 13, 2025, unofficial English translation hosted by ConstitutionNet
The judiciary was declared independent. Exceptional courts were prohibited, and administrative justice had a distinct place. Yet the seven members of a new Supreme Constitutional Court would be appointed by the president. Their competence and integrity were required by the text; presidential selection remained the method. Judicial independence and appointment authority were therefore adjacent facts, not a contradiction resolved merely by quoting one and ignoring the other. The capacity to review executive action would depend on how judges behaved and how the institutional framework protected them. A transitional president would have a major role in constructing the court asked to interpret the rules governing his own administration. Constitutional declaration, March 13, 2025, unofficial English translation hosted by ConstitutionNet
Transitional justice occupied the closing provisions. Article 48 addressed exceptional laws, consequences of Anti-Terrorism Court judgments and security measures affecting civil and property records. Article 49 provided for a victim-centred commission and addressed accountability, truth and justice. Its wording also focused explicitly on crimes of the former regime. That focus would later concern observers seeking accountability across affiliations, including abuses by armed groups incorporated into the new state. The declaration did not eliminate the question of how to handle crimes committed after Assad's fall. Its promises had to operate in a country where the coast had already demonstrated that new authorities and their allies could generate fresh claims demanding examination. Constitutional declaration, March 13, 2025, unofficial English translation hosted by ConstitutionNet IIIM A/80/650, February 23, 2026, reporting February 1, 2025-January 31, 2026
Existing legislation would remain effective unless changed or repealed. That continuity prevented a complete legal vacuum, but it also preserved parts of the apparatus inherited from Assad. Article 52 established a five-calendar-year interim period from the declaration's entry into force, ending after a permanent constitution and elections under it. Five years was a long interval for a government born in military victory to construct a different source of legitimacy. The declaration created a timetable and a destination. Neither guaranteed the eventual election would occur as intended. Syrians would spend the interval governed by institutions whose power and composition had been settled before those final electoral arrangements existed. Constitutional declaration, March 13, 2025, unofficial English translation hosted by ConstitutionNet
On March 29, a full transitional cabinet replaced caretaker arrangements. The government added ministries including emergency and disaster management and sports and youth. The change widened its formal responsibilities beyond the administration inherited during the offensive. Naming a minister and creating a portfolio could establish a place to direct a claim. It did not immediately provide the money, staff or infrastructure required to answer it. The transition now possessed more recognizable state forms: a president, constitutional framework, ministries and a prospective legislature. The hard task was to make those forms useful to people encountering damaged schools, unreliable electricity, lost property and security forces whose discipline remained uneven. Anadolu Agency, December 7, updated December 9, 2025