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24-01-2023
Limitation of disposal is a provisional measure that includes placing a precautionary seizure on someone’s real estate to guarantee any financial rights owed to the state. This measure comes at the request of a public entity, usually the relevant governorate’s finance directorate or the local city council.
24-01-2023
When the Syrian revolution began in 2011, most residents of Al-Zahraa neighbourhood in Homs sided with the regime, many even joining the National Defence Forces, a pro-government militia. The NDF subsequently made Al-Zahraa into a base for attacks on surrounding pro-opposition neighbourhoods such as Al-Bayadeh and Karam Al-Zeitoun, and harassed residents of Al-Zahraa, seizing many displaced people’s homes.
A copy of a circular, issued by the Directorate of Cadastral Affairs in Aleppo on January 15, 2023, stipulates not to put a lawsuit or precautionary or executive seizure mark on a property’s Land Record until after the property’s real estate record is referred to the Limitation of Disposal Section.
News
24-01-2023
The state-owned General Housing Establishment, which is supposed to provide affordable housing to the population, has once again raised the estimated prices for alternative housing units in the Marota City project. It also requested those eligible for the units to pay 30 percent of this new value now.
Analysis & Features
24-01-2023
In the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs, the Central Land Registry Department and the Information Department are responsible for preserving and archiving various real estate documents to organise tasks and prepare for emergencies.
Reports & Papers
04-11-2022
Watch our online discussion on HLP rights in Syria featuring Mazen Ezzi of the The Syria Report, Jon Unruh of McGill University and Mutasem Syoufi of The Day After organisation.
Directory
04-11-2022
The Norwegian Refugee Council is a NGO operating in Syria since 2013.
News
17-01-2023
Recent years have seen the majority-Kurdish Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria authorities seize many absentee-owned properties. When those absentees return home and demand their properties back, authorities have offered to lease them, without any compensation for the previous occupancy period.
Analysis & Features
17-01-2023
From the 16th century until the end of Ottoman rule in Syria, the Sharia courts regulated the documentation for proving real estate ownership and entered them into their records. These records are still preserved in Damascus and Aleppo, and to a lesser degree in Homs and Hama, and are still used before the Sharia courts today.
Reports and Papers
- Some of the main HLP-related factors impacting the return of displaced people during the first half of 2022In this report, The Syria Report summarises a selection of the housing, land, and property issues it covered in depth throughout the first six months of 2022. These issues, which were featured in dozens of articles, can be categorised into the following main themes:
- Deriving Countermeasures to the Use of Housing, Land and Property Rights as a War-Financing CommodityEfforts to thwart the trafficking of conflict commodities to finance wars constitute an ongoing endeavour. As specific approaches become effective for certain commodities, belligerent actors pursue new forms of exploitation.
- An Outcry Against Informality. The impact of land on the treatment of precarious settlements, as spaces of political competitionThis paper proposes to explore the role played by the different representations of land and shows how the co-presence and competition between these different conceptions shape public action on precarious settlements.
More articles
17-01-2023
Seven people were killed on November 2, 2022, when a four-storey building collapsed in the Rural Damascus governorate city of Al-Hajar Al-Aswad. The victims had been there to extract iron from the damaged building’s columns and roof in order to loot and recycle it. This illicit business--the rubble trade--appears to be attracting new companies as it enjoys military and security protection.
17-01-2023
Two temporary housing buildings have been completed in Aleppo’s Masaken Hanano district and will house residents of homes at risk of collapse, the governor of Aleppo told the state-owned Tishreen newspaper in early January.
10-01-2023
Law No. 33 of 2008 on Documenting Ownership of Built Real Estate and Parts of Unbuilt Real Estate was issued to resolve ownership issues related to unlicensed construction and real estate subdivision in informal settlements. Law No. 33 aims to establish and record these properties within the Land Registry according to their reality on the ground, under certain conditions.
10-01-2023
After several years of public auction-run investment in farmlands owned by absentees forcibly displaced from Hama governorate, a foreign NGO has rehabilitated a local irrigation canal, contributing to the legally questionable investment in those lands.