SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties and the Abductees Mothers Association held a dialogue seminar under the “SPARK” project, supported by the DT Institute, to discuss transitional justice pathways in Yemen and Syria: opportunities and challenges between implementation and preparation. The seminar aimed to exchange expertise between the Yemeni and Syrian experiences amid ongoing conflicts and the widespread violations they have produced, with a focus on transitional justice as an integrated framework that includes truth-seeking, victim redress, reparations, accountability, and institutional reform.

The seminar opened with welcoming remarks emphasizing that the event goes beyond a purely academic character and constitutes a response to a growing need for realistic approaches to address the legacy of war and violations and to pave the way toward recovery and sustainable peacebuilding. The opening remarks stressed that transitional justice is not a slogan, but rather a prerequisite for rebuilding the state and society, and that any reconciliation not grounded in truth remains liable to collapse, while justice that does not amplify victims’ voices remains incomplete.

During the introductory segment, the objectives of the “SPARK” project were presented as a program to support peace in Yemen through accountability, reconciliation, and knowledge exchange. An overview was provided of its phases, which include producing studies on Yemenis’ perceptions of transitional justice, building capacities through training participants from among victims, survivors, and civil society leaders, and advancing to the implementation of restorative justice initiatives, awareness-raising activities, and direct engagement with victims and civil society organizations.

Across its core thematic sessions, the seminar discussed the feasibility of preparing for transitional justice during conflict. Contributions highlighted that civil society in Yemen has played an advanced role in groundwork efforts through monitoring, documentation, and elevating victims’ voices, despite challenges related to fragmented efforts, difficulties in access and trust-building, and the continuation of war. In the Syrian context, a framework based on interconnected tracks was presented, including truth, accountability, reparations, national memory, guarantees of non-recurrence, and peacebuilding, alongside reference to compounded difficulties—most notably the economic situation and the multiplicity of violation patterns and their variation across regions—requiring flexibility in responding to the context.

The seminar also addressed the centrality of victims within transitional justice processes, underscoring that their participation should not be merely formal or symbolic, and that protecting victims and witnesses and enhancing transparency regarding the aims and uses of documentation are decisive elements for building trust. Discussions stressed the need to link documentation to pathways that can lead to truth and redress, preventing victims from feeling that their testimonies are collected without impact, and strengthening the prospects of using outcomes later for accountability and reparations.

In the session on partnerships between transitional justice bodies and civil society, the discussion emphasized the importance of building on the accumulated work achieved by organizations and victims’ associations in documentation and advocacy over past years, rather than starting from scratch. It also stressed that effective partnership is not measured only by information exchange, but by its ability to translate documentation into clear priorities and actionable demands, and to establish ongoing channels for review, correction, and oversight in service of building a society grounded in truth and justice.

The seminar concluded with a discussion of the risks of reducing transitional justice to elite settlements and power-sharing. Contributions emphasized that short-term peace that sidelines justice cannot guarantee stability, and that pressure to secure justice anchored in victims’ rights requires expanding civil coalitions, entrenching public awareness, and activating reference frameworks and commitments that uphold victims’ right to truth and redress. Final interventions also stressed the need to simplify transitional justice concepts and communicate them in language accessible to victims and the broader community, so that transitional justice shifts from an elite debate into a broad societal process capable of protecting rights and preventing the recurrence of violations.