News & Events

The Irish Centre for Human Rights continues its lunchtime seminar series with a seminar on 'I want to talk about home– Syria and the forgotten detainees' by Ghufran Khoulani. The seminar takes place at 1pm, Wednesday, 22nd February 2023, in the Seminar Room, Irish Centre for Human Rights. All are welcome to attend. 

Ghufran and her family are originally from the town of Daraya, close to Damascus. Ghufran was forced to leave Syria due the conflict and has been in Ireland since 2015. Ghufran advocates on behalf of the Caesar Families Association for the creation of an independent, international mechanism to determine the fate of Syria's disappeared. The Caesar Families Association is a group of families that have lost loved ones, victims of forced disappearance and torture in Saydnaya military prison and other detention centres.

'We identified our loved ones in the Caesar photos which were leaked from the Syrian regime by a military defector codenamed Caesar. Tens of thousands of civilians have been arbitrarily detained, subjected to torture and sexual violence, and more than 100,000 people remain missing or disappeared. As Syrian refugees get deported from Lebanon and Turkey and some EU countries now declare that Syria is safe for returnees, Saydnaya is a key reminder of the harrowing reality of Syria today. The forcible disappearance of Syrians continues daily. This key issue of Syrian detainees has been forgotten though it impacts almost every Syrian family. My three brothers did not get the chance to tell the world. They died there. I would like to tell their story.'