No Guarantees on HLP Rights as Aleppo City Council Removes Debris Across City

In the eastern neighbourhoods of Aleppo, teams from the Syrian Civil Defence, also known as the “White Helmets,” have started the first phase of debris clearance and the demolition of damaged buildings, in coordination with the Aleppo City Council and the Directorate of Services. This step comes after years of shelling by Assad regime forces and Russian airstrikes, which destroyed over 60 neighbourhoods between 2012 and 2016, causing damage to infrastructure and thousands of homes.

The following report, based on an extensive interview with Ali Mohammad, Director of Community Resilience Programmes at the White Helmets, details the ongoing project, its implementation steps, and highlights the legal and administrative challenges that continue to cast a shadow over the future of the affected neighbourhoods. Despite the clarity of the execution mechanisms, there is still no vision for the next phase, particularly for protecting property rights and compensating those affected.

The current work focuses on several neighbourhoods in eastern Aleppo. It includes sorting debris, recycling reusable materials at the Ramouseh recycling plant, and demolishing at-risk buildings based on reports from the Public Safety Committee of the Aleppo City Council. This committee is the same as the one during the Assad regime but has added some new staff, including engineers who were previously in opposition-held parts of Aleppo’s rural areas. To this end, the Civil Defence Directorate is working to obtain legal approvals in coordination with the Aleppo City Council and the Directorate of Services.

The previous Aleppo City Council had already undertaken partial debris clearance operations during 2023 and 2024 for buildings demolished based on safety reports in eastern Aleppo. However, these operations were not driven by a comprehensive vision for reconstruction or compensation for the affected but were rather limited executive actions confined to selected neighbourhoods, amid a lack of transparency about demolition priorities or the parties benefiting from the recycled debris.

According to the White Helmets’ Ali Mohammad, the debris removal project began in its first phase in the Shaar, Qadi Askar, and Karm Homad neighbourhoods of eastern Aleppo. Engineering teams have begun demolition of the old telecommunications building and Al-Kifah School in the Shaar neighbourhood. However, despite the current demolition being limited to public buildings, the absence of any public discussion about the future of adjacent damaged private buildings signals the continuation of the previously adopted executive approach, which raised concerns about transparency and the lack of legal guarantees for property rights holders in previous debris removal projects in Aleppo.

Demolition of the Transportation Building. (Source: The Syria Report)

Mr Mohammad said the current demolitions are a first step towards reviving life in the city, paving the way for the restoration of infrastructure and preparing to rebuild schools, hospitals, and other facilities.

While debris removal is, from an engineering perspective, a necessary step to prepare for reconstruction, carrying it out without a comprehensive vision for property rights and a holistic recovery plan raises fears of repeating past experiences in Aleppo, where widespread demolitions were carried out without genuine involvement of the community or guarantees of compensation. This issue was also observed in several other areas subjected to reorganisation or partial demolition under the previous regime.

However, despite the technical and engineering importance of this step, dealing with debris in the Syrian context carries highly sensitive legal and social dimensions. According to past experiences under the Assad regime, debris was often removed without precise documentation of the ownership of the cleared properties, without involving rights holders or informing them of the demolition decisions, and without compensating them for the debris. This creates a risk of permanent loss of ownership, especially in informal areas or those only partially damaged. Without a reliable official database, removing rubble before securing property rights increases the risk of unlawful land seizure or redistribution based on administrative considerations that disregard the rights of original residents. This risk is particularly acute for women, who often lack formal property documentation due to prevailing social norms, making them especially vulnerable to loss of property rights in the absence of inclusive consultation processes. This makes debris clearance in Aleppo, without a parallel process for securing property rights and guarantees, a step fraught with risks, despite its promises of reconstruction.

Mr Mohammad said that debris suitable for recycling is transported, in coordination with the Directorate of Services, to the rubble recycling plant in the Ramouseh area, where it is reused to produce tiles, blocks, and materials for paving roads and pavements. Other materials, such as metal, are handed over to the Directorate of Services’ sector-specific committees. The Directorate of Services of the Aleppo City Council operates the Ramouseh recycling plant and subsequently distributes the renewed materials to 12 sub-directorates, each with its own machinery, staff, and administrative team. Mixed debris containing organic waste and unsuitable for recycling is transported to the Ain Al-Asafir area for disposal through landfilling.

It is worth noting that adopting a rubble recycling mechanism in Aleppo is not a new approach but extends a model previously used by the Aleppo governorate before the fall of the regime. This approach focused on the technical aspects of the issue without considering its legal and social dimensions. At the time, rubble recycling was promoted as an effective tool to support reconstruction efforts, but without judicial oversight of the legality of the demolitions or transparent mechanisms to determine the sources of the debris. This created opportunities for the illegal exploitation of this rubble. The rubble recycling plant in Ramouseh is a clear example of this approach; it was established in 2021 with support from the United Nations Development Programme and was then used within a centralised plan to reuse debris without addressing ownership issues or involving local communities.

Mr Mohammad added that all of the above is part of the first phase, in the Shaar, Qadi Askar, and Karm Homad neighbourhoods, which is scheduled to last for five months, from February to June 2025. Preparations for the second phase have begun with the White Helmets teams, covering 16 neighbourhoods in eastern Aleppo to remove debris and carry out demolitions based on Public Safety Committee reports. Mr Mohammad added that the third phase is still being designed with potential donors to include all affected neighbourhoods.

Moving forward, despite the technical and administrative progress that debris removal represents, the coming phases still lack clear answers to a number of fundamental concerns, foremost among them the lack of transparency in supervision and decision-making mechanisms, and the fragility of the local institutional framework focused on implementation. As these steps are being taken without a comprehensive plan to involve residents or address the fate of property ownership, there remains a risk that debris removal may become an entry point for the unfair redistribution of lands once occupied by homes and residential buildings.