Date of submission: 4 September 2020
28 Syrian and Palestinian civil society organizations and bodies have signed a legal memorandum that was received on September 4, 2020, by the Office of Special Envoy Geir Pederson.
The new regulatory plan for the Yarmouk camp raises residential towers on the rubble of homes that used to house more than 400,000 people, most of them Palestinian refugees.
The memorandum includes a refutation and legal detailing of the violations committed by the Assad regime against the camp residents through its issuance of the new regulatory plan, which is based on unfair laws and unsafe environment that deprives the people of this neighborhood of their rights of housing, return, objection or compensation.
The signatories called on authorities concerned with the affairs of Palestinian refugees at the national level, namely the PLO, and UNRWA at the international level, to assume their responsibilities in preventing this scheme from coming to pass, to take a clear and explicit stance to reject it, and to demand the Syrian regime cancel it and return to the regulatory plan of 2004. They also called on all UN institutions, the Security Council, the EU Commission, all countries concerned with the Syrian issue, and international humanitarian and human rights organizations, to urgently intervene and exert serious pressure on the Syrian regime, to reverse this scheme which will have catastrophic effects on the properties of Palestinian and Syrian refugees of Yarmouk Camp, as well as other Palestinian camps affected by the Syrian conflict. The signatories see the regime’s attempts to disguise its brutal policies of dispossessing Palestinian refugees and Syrian citizens under the cover of the law, a crime against its victims and against humanity, and all efforts must be combined to expose and deter those responsible and involved…
Read full Memorandum: English / Arabic
Read the executive summary: English / Arabic
