Between Certainty and Guesswork: Social Work in Syria

Almost…around…close to…words like these are all that is available to us in the discussion of women's issues in Syria, because there are no exact numbers we can use to describe any phenomenon. All we have, instead, are numbers that are not based on research, but on guesswork. For example, the number of honor crimes or killings in Syria that is released to the public lies between 200 and 300 crimes per year. This number is inaccurate and not based on any authority, since the people who determine and announce the information reach this number through theory and guesswork rather than through research. Actually, the true number is much higher.

The numbers we have available to talk about honor crimes are similar to those that we use to talk about dozens of other issues, in that all of them rely on guesswork. Other examples include the number of unmarried women in Syria, the incidence of slander against women and crimes against a woman's reputation, the rate of marriage between close relatives, the frequency of polygamy, the percent of people who are disabled, the number of cases of divorce and their variety, the ages of divorcees, and the common length of marriages prior to divorce. In contrast, many other countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Algeria have started to publically publish official numbers and valuable studies regarding these issues. These countries have established centers for social research, which have moved away from guesswork and release numbers which are closer to the truth. These countries also train experts in social issues at the university level and can be proud of the research background of their professorate, the number of high-level degrees in these specific subjects that their university faculties possess, and the depth of understanding they gain about gender and the issues of women and children. In these countries, the media plays a huge role in supporting and facilitating all of this research. Currently in Syria, this kind of research is not taking place as it is in other intellectual and cultural centers in the Middle East--few projects exploring women, children, and gender take place in Syrian universities. Even when the rare project on gender or women's issues is undertaken, the findings are not given the opportunity to reach the public though the media. Instead, the information is left to languish in the universities until it is forgotten.

Violence Against Women—The Luckier Statistics

The statistics regarding violence against women in Syria have been some of the luckiest in this field. The first time official numbers were announced regarding this issue, the Syrian Women's Union claimed that 25% of Syrian women had been exposed to violence in the last two years. Before this study, there were a number of other studies and efforts produced about this phenomenon by other experts and researchers.  The first step was to do research to get the critical statistics. However, the numbers that the different studies eventually reached were by no means unanimous or definitive: the margin of error was significant and many of the studies reached different results.

The Problem with Official Numbers

For a long time, it has been very difficult to reach the sources of statistics in Syria, largely because the media does not publish this information. Rather, media coverage is dominated by ideas better described as narrow-minded myths than social statistics. This kind of coverage is the result of the fear the media has about discussing social issues and traditions honestly in the public sphere. The limited media coverage also creates a barrier between the sources of information and the Syrian public, and many people feel that they are forbidden from giving their honest opinions about political and social issues. Thus, even the approach of the average Syrian to these issues lacks honesty and is based on insufficient information, which further compounds the problem of statistics in Syria. Whenever the media does come by statistics to report, they face the labyrinth of the government bureaucracy which controls what is forbidden and what is allowed to be expressed in Syrian media. The power of this bureaucracy often prevents the media from presenting stories or facts.

However, Syria has recently begun to experience a rise in the generation of social statistics, as opposed to the previous focus on political and economic data, thanks to the entrance of the Central Office of Statistics into this field. However, this is not enough: the Central Office limits itself to interacting with government offices, which isolates it from the activists and social workers who also work in this field. These activists do not have the legitimacy to obtain the kinds of numbers critical to their work, since they are working in NGOs which do not have the survey licenses that the government requires. 

The Statistics Gap

Accurate statistics are very important because they are our only means by which to evaluate the status quo and they give us greater ability to make the right decisions. Thus, there is great need for special institutions to generate accurate social statistics to replace the incorrect numbers that the government provides. The government's guesswork doesn't fill Syria's growing need for accurate surveys and social statistics. Perhaps the most important establishment which has recently joined the quest for accurate statistics in Syria is the Norwegian company FAFO, which does accurate surveys using local teams. This kind of work, accurate and also local, is what encourages us to keep trying to fill the big gap in fundamental statistical information in Syrian society.  The next important step is to demand the establishment of a local institution that will work to provide accurate statistics and to demand that it is given enough authority to do its job freely and confidently.  When we have an institution generating statistics that we can trust, we can escape from words like "around," "almost," and "close to," and turn instead to words like "certainly" and "exactly."

Yahya Alous

Translated by: Susanna Ferguson