Code of Conduct for Syrian Coexistence

According to congruent news reports by German, Italian, French and Arabic media, the Code of Conduct for Syrian Coexistence was signed in November 2017 in Berlin after several months of secret negotiations between community leaders and notables from Syria and the Syrian diaspora.[2][3][4][5] Its motivation was to overcome the ethno-sectarian divide in the Syrian civil war and to reach understanding beyond political affiliations with the Syrian opposition or the regime of president Bashar al-Assad.[6] Among the founders of this initiative were representatives of various ethnic and religious communities, such as Sunni Arabs, Alawites, Kurds, Christians and, at a later stage, Druze, Ismailis, Turkmens, Yazidis and Circassians. Several leaders of the major tribal federations in Syria (e.g. the Shammar, 'Anizzah, Uqaydat) are reported to have participated in the negotiations.[7]

The original document was written in Arabic;[8] the English translation was published subsequently on a website close to the initiative.[9] The term 'coexistence' in the title of the document is a rather approximate translation of the Arabic 'aish mushtarak which literally means 'living together' and can be seen as more interactive than 'coexistence' would suggest.

Original document of the Code of Conduct for Syrian Coexistence

The initiative attracted some attention after the Code of Conduct for Syrian Coexistence had been revealed to several international media in Rome in Winter 2018. It was debated on Arabic TV channels and also criticized for the fact that most of the participants that live in government-controlled Syria, in particular the Alawites, did not reveal their names, citing security concerns.[10] Since then the initiators have continued their talks.[11] In March 2019 the initiative announced the establishment of a representative body for the community leaders, in order to be able to implement the principles of the document, to conduct mediation among Syrian communities and to liaise with international diplomats or the United Nation's special envoy for Syria. This body is based on the document, hence the name "Council of the Syrian Charter" (majlis al-mudawana al-souria, the Arabic word for "code" or "charter" being homonymous).[10]

According to an interview he granted to the German public TV channel ZDF in 2019, the German-Syrian legal scholar Naseef Naeem had chaired the negotiations that led to the signing of the document.[12] Among the publicly known members of this initiative are Sheikh Amir al-Dandal of the Uqaydat tribe, Prince Mulham al-Shibli of the Fawa'ira tribe, the Christian attorney Abdallah Rophael (Rifail), the dentist and political activist Mustafa Kayali from Aleppo, the civil society activist Sima Abd Rabbo, the religious scholar Mohammad Habash from Damascus, or Sami Khiyami, former Syrian ambassador to the United Kingdom.[13] A policy paper issued by the German foundation Bertelsmann Stiftung on the Syrian crisis in 2019 recommended that the European Union support the initiative since its successes "show that "reconciliation can take place".[14]