Translation: North and East Syria’s Family Law, 2023
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In 2014, The Social Contract of the Autonomous Regions of Afrin, Jazira, and Kobane was created, forming the first constitution of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES). At the same time, the Women’s Law was also established with the aim of enshrining women’s rights in the emerging legal system of North and East Syria (NES).
The Women’s law aimed to address inequality between men and women in NES. Many of the rights were established in this law aimed to prevent common practices which were harmful to women and children including (but were not limited to) prohibiting forced marriages, polygamy and child brides. Additionally, the Women’s Law gave women and men equal rights to initiate divorce proceedings and required a representative from women’s institutions to be present at court proceedings involving women and families. It also established the co-chair system found across DAANES’ political, social and military institutions.
Whilst the Women’s Law did include provisions to guarantee “the rights of children and protect them from all forms of coercion and abuse” and named other rights and protections for children and families, in 2020 the Women’s Law was amended and renamed to the Family Law. Emphasis in the text moved from being a law primarily focusing on women’s rights to including more rights concerning families and children. The other aim was to expand the Women’s Law and bring it up to date with the new situation in NES. By then, the political system in the three Kurdish-Majority regions that declared autonomy in 2012 had expanded to almost a third of Syria, encompassing all the land east of the Euphrates River after liberating it from ISIS.
The Family Law, based on the provisions of the Social Contract, was approved by the Legislative Council on November 10, 2022 and was signed in Amude on February 4, 2023.
The document is much longer than the original Women’s Law and included new articles covering a range of topics. In addition to existing provisions in the Women’s Law, the Family Law added stipulations for the custody of children following divorce or death of the parents, women’s personal property rights and formalized the role of the Mala Jin (women’s houses) within the legal system among many other new additions.
Following 2026’s January ceasefire and integration agreement between the Syrian Transitional Government (STG) and DAANES, the family law will no longer be applicable in NES. The integration process between NES and the rest of the country will see the former eventually placed under Damascus’ legal system.
Not all the provisions guaranteed by the Autonomous Administration’s Family Law will be guaranteed under the legislation of the STG. Polygamy, for example, is still a legal practice in Syria and it remains very difficult for a woman to divorce her husband without his consent. Additionally, while the legal age of marital consent in Syria is 17 for a woman and 18 for a man, it is still common practice in some regions of Syria for girls as young as 13 to be married with parental consent.
Despite the integration, RIC is publishing a translation of the family law here for posterity. We hope it will stand as a record of what the autonomous administration attempted to achieve with a new legal system that stood in stark contrast with both Assad’s Ba’athist government and ISIS theocracy for 14 years.