Seven Decades on, Unresolved Property Disputes Linger on in a Damascus Informal Settlement

In the 1950s, a large informal settlement, known as the Southern Midan Zoned area, emerged in the southwestern part of the Midan neighbourhood in Damascus. The area is bordered to the west by the Daraa-Damascus motorway and to the south by the Dahadil area.

For over seven decades, unresolved disputes over property claims and the faulty work of dispute resolution committees have left this area in legal limbo.

Most of the buildings in this informal area are unlicensed and constructed on expropriated land. However, it is difficult to classify this area as an informal settlement because its streets are planned, and its buildings largely adhere to construction codes, including multi-storey buildings of six to seven floors. A mixed population from the Midan neighbourhood in Damascus and the southern governorates of Daraa and Quneitra inhabits this area. According to estimates by a correspondent for The Syria Report, about 10,000 people live there.

In a regular meeting held in mid-January 2024, members of the Damascus Governorate Council called for the adoption of a recommendation to digitise and archive property records in the Southern Midan Zoned area to protect the rights of the owners due to what they described as stumbling in the work of the dispute resolution committees. The Director of Planning and Urbanisation in the governorate, Hassan Traboulsi, said that five dispute resolution committees were formed in the area without specifying the date of formation. He added that these committees have not completed their work due to the lack of information about old properties and the emergence of new residential and commercial properties in the area. Mr Traboulsi also mentioned that there is currently a study to issue a new zoning plan for the area.

At the beginning of the 1950s, the state expropriated private agricultural lands, some of which belonged to residents of the Midan neighbourhood and others to people from Daraa and Quneitra. Some of these lands were also dissolved properties, meaning properties that emerged from estates without heirs, or with heirs who did not meet the ownership laws, or from neglecting to use Amiri lands for five years, thereby making them into private state property.

Subsequently, five committees were formed that included judges, currently referred to by Damascus Governorate officials as dispute resolution committees. The Expropriation and Distribution Department was responsible for forming these committees. It is not known to which governmental body this agency belonged in the 1950s. However, a department with a similar name currently falls under the Directorate of Planning and Urbanisation in the Damascus Governorate.

The formation of these committees predates any of the urban zoning laws currently known in Syria, which seems to be the reason behind the confusion of the members and officials of the Damascus Governorate in naming and describing these committees. From the scattered information available, these committees appear to be tasked with multiple duties, from inventorying properties and assets and estimating their value to resolving disputes among rights holders. The responsibility of the Expropriation and Distribution Department for forming these committees indicates that one of their tasks was also to estimate the compensation value for the rights holders.

Therefore, the work of these committees parallels the work of three types of committees currently known under the prevailing urban zoning and planning laws:

1. The Inventory and Description Committee for properties in the area, including trees and crops, also conducts a social survey of the area’s residents.
2. The Real Estate Appraisal Committee deals with buildings, structures, and trees.
3. The Dispute Resolution Committee has judicial authority and is charged with considering objections and claims of ownership or real estate rights on properties within the zoning area.

In all cases, the work of the five committees formed in the 1950s was not completed, and no lists were issued with the names of the rights holders and their property shares. Compensation values were not determined, and the Dispute Resolution Committee resolved none of the disputes among rights holders.

Over time, with the unfinished work of the committees, the area has become a large, inhabited informal settlement with many unlicensed residential buildings erected on expropriated land. According to the Syria Report correspondent, the Damascus Governorate has no study on rezoning the area nor any social study on its current occupants and their rights. The former governor of Damascus, Bishr Al-Sabban, had said in 2008 that 2,000 occupancies in the area needed to be resolved before issuing the final zoning plan.

The Syria Report’s correspondent pointed out that the Damascus Governorate does not currently prioritise this area due to its lack of funding. However, it may later impose the area’s rezoning under one of the controversial urban planning laws issued during the war years, such as Law No. 23 of 2015 or Law No. 10 of 2018.