Land Registry in Syria after a Decade of Conflict: A Tale of Three Cities

This study offers an original analysis into the nature of the governance of the land registry system in three Syrian cities controlled by armed non-state actors during the civil war. It adopts a qualitative methodology to compare Douma, alRaqqa and Idlib. The management of the land registry has witnessed both localised transformations and significant resilience. As state institutions collapsed and new non-state governing actors emerged, the old land registry system has fallen apart, and pre-existing gaps between official records and real estate ownership have deepened, with significant implications for the possibility of sustainable peace in the country.