The Committee for Protection of Syriac, Assyrian and Armenian Absentee Properties is a civilian body located in the Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria (AANES) established in 2014. 

The committee was set up to address HLP rights issue related to Syrians of Syriac, Assyrian and Armenian descent who have emigrated from Syria (absentees) and left behind real estate and other properties without legal representatives to take care of them. The issue with those properties, especially the ones in city and town centres, is that they have become the targets of seizure through extortion, forgery and fraud. Thus, the committee is responsible only for intervening before AANES courts in judicial disputes where one of the parties is an absentee Christian. Members of the committee file complaints related to extortion or occupation of absentees’ properties and handle requests from tenants of absentee Christians’ properties regarding rent, contracts and evictions.

However, the committee’s powers are limited only to the cases that are raised before the AANES courts, as well as any cases of property violation already known to the absentee Christian property owners themselves. At the same time, some property extorters may benefit from the conflict of jurisdiction between AANES courts and regime courts. For example, an extorter can counteract a lawsuit raised against him in the courts belonging to one of the parties to the case by filing a separate lawsuit himself before the courts of the other party. This conflict grants the usurper the opportunity to continue occupying a given property.