Case Studies

Syrian embassy projections

In August 2020, to mark International Day of the Disappeared, we were determined to draw attention to the thousands of people still disappeared and missing in Syria. We wanted to bring the voices of their families, and their demands for […]

FreeBassel Campaign

Bassel Khartabil was a Syrian-Palestinian human rights activist and open-software developer. In 2012 he was detained by the Syrian regime. An international campaign for his release was led by Noura Ghazi, his wife and fellow human rights activist. In this […]

“After Isis” email

In emails to our supporters, we often try to focus on an action that we want them to take. However – sometimes the most important thing you can do is just update them on what is happening. Your supporters are […]

Kesh Malek Murals

In March 2019, the Syrian civil society organisation Kesh Malek painted a mural in Idlib of the journalist Marie Colvin who had been killed in Syria in 2012. The caption was a quote from Colvin made during the siege of […]

Refugee Survey

In 2015, we teamed up with Adopt a Revolution to conduct a survey of Syrian refugees living in Germany. At the time, everyone in Europe was talking about the refugee crisis and potential solutions, but no one was consulting with […]

Russian Embassy Projections

30 August marks the International Day of the Disappeared, an annual memorial for those who have been detained and disappeared worldwide. In Syria, where 100,000 people remain missing, the day is particularly pertinent, and in 2018 we used it to […]

Ghouta Celebrity Letter

In late February 2018, the UN passed a resolution calling for a 30-day ceasefire over eastern Ghouta. The area had been under bombardment by Syrian and Russian forces, which had subjected it to a chemical weapons attack, in addition to […]

Families For Freedom

The Families for Freedom officially launched in February 2017 at the Syrian peace talks in Geneva. Along with other Syrian civil society organisations, we’d been trying for years to have an impact on the issue of detention and enforced disappearance. […]

“Tell Putin”

On 4 July 2019, Pope Francis was due to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting came at an appalling time for Syria. Putin, along with Assad, had launched a devastating attack on Idlib, putting millions of civilian lives […]

Italy: Stand with Syrians, not with Assad

In March 2019, Italy’s then-Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi said his government was considering reopening Italy’s embassy in Damascus, something that would have normalised relations with the regime. It also would have made Italy the first European country to consider […]

Freedom Bus

NOTE: Read the ‘Families For Freedom’ case study for background on the movement’s work. The Freedom Bus began its journey in October 2017. With the Syrian peace talks stalled, there were few possible moments to generate public pressure and media […]

SNHR data and reports

The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) was founded in June 2011 by Fadel Abdul Ghany. The aim of the organisation was to detail human rights violations during the Syrian conflict, something the group has done ever since. Using open-source […]

Act for Ghouta

In October 2017, a group of Syrian activists launched a campaign to raise awareness of the Assad regime’s devastating siege of eastern Ghouta. One of the group members, Marcelle Shehwaro, had been engaged in similar efforts to raise awareness of […]

The Ice Bucket Challenge

The Ice Bucket Challenge began in 2013 as the “cold water challenge” and was used to raise money for different causes. It began to be associated with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s disease after a baseball player with […]

Siege Soup

This campaign was pulled together the day before Syrian peace talks in Geneva on 29 January 2016. We wanted to remind politicians and policymakers that, as they debated how to end the violence in Syria, people were living and dying […]

Who is killing civilians in Syria?

This remains one of The Syria Campaign’s most simple but high impact campaigns. At a time when ISIS was considered globally to be the biggest threat to civilians, we teamed up with the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) to […]

Siege Letter

Sieges have been used as a tactic throughout the Syrian conflict, resulting in mass starvation and loss of life. In January 2016, we wrote an open letter to the UN accusing it of complicity in the regime’s deployment of sieges. […]

Break the Sieges campaign

We launched the Break the Sieges campaign in January 2016, around the time that news was breaking of people starving to death in a small town called Madaya near Damascus. The campaign was a long-term project, which lasted more than […]

‘Killing the Truth’ Report

The Syria Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, has always posed a dual threat to the Assad regime and its backers. Firstly, the successful rescue work of White Helmets volunteers frustrates the ability of the regime to drive […]

The Women of Ghouta

In 2018, much of our work was focused on the ongoing and horrific siege of eastern Ghouta. Our supporters were engaged and devastated by the news, but it was up to us to think of new ways to ensure a […]

Remembering Dr Maaz

This Facebook post, which was published on 28 April 2016, is The Syria Campaign’s best performing post ever, with a reach of around 10 million people. Written as a first-hand account by Dr Hatem, the director of the Children’s Hospital […]

‘In Reverse’ video

Believing that organisations are more effective and impactful when working in coordination, Crisis Action brought together a group of international organisations under the #WithSyria banner. The Syria Campaign was asked by #WithSyria to take the lead on the production of […]

Airdrops to Daraya

Sometimes, the best way to make your demands heard is to talk to the recipients directly. On 13 May 2016, The Syria Campaign tweeted Abeer Etefa, a spokesperson for the UN’s World Food Programme. We also included the Twitter accounts […]

Planet Syria

In 2016, the whole world was talking about ISIS. The extremist group was targeting civilians the world over, and what people knew of Syria was that it was home to this terrorist group that had the capital of its so-called […]

Partnering with the White Helmets

It seems strange to think of now, but there was a time when the White Helmets were barely known outside of Syria. In 2014, we were desperate to mobilise global public opinion against the aerial war being perpetrated by the […]

Limbs at the Russian Embassy

This was a direct action that took weeks of secretive planning. Our goal was to organise an attention-grabbing visual protest to draw attention to the escalation of the siege of Aleppo where dozens of airstrikes were hitting hospitals and crowded […]

“We failed”

Campaigns don’t always result in wins, particularly when they’re targeted at international governments with their own agendas and alliances. Sometimes it’s important to acknowledge the campaigns that didn’t succeed, in order to highlight an area of continued concern, show transparency […]

Idlib Lives

Since 2011, there has been tremendous growth in civil society across Syria. People have come together to form groups and organisations addressing every issue imaginable, from human rights to women’s rights to community development, and much more. We have always […]

Stephen Hawking and Syria

One effective way to ensure that Syria remains in the public discourse is to sensitively and carefully mention it during discussions of other trending news. We did this on 14 March 2018 when the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking passed away. […]

World Cup campaign

As the world was captivated by the World Cup in Russia, we partnered with the Oscar-nominated filmmakers, the Aleppo Media Centre (AMC), to highlight the war crimes being committed by the host nation in Syria. To that end, AMC made […]

“Taking Sides” report on the UN

Since the Syrian conflict began, civilians have felt betrayed and abandoned by the international community, most notably the UN. In Syria, the UN has been perceived as working too closely with the regime, whether that’s by lodging its staff in […]

Bellingcat

Bellingcat is an investigative journalism website set up by the British citizen journalist and blogger Eliot Higgins. It began with Higgins combing through videos of the Syrian conflict and identifying the weapons being used in them, something that saw him […]