In a statement posted on the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor’s Facebook page, the Ministry confirmed that the arrests are part of ongoing efforts to uncover the truth and ensure justice for the victims, in cooperation with the Ministry of Interior. The Ministry also called on all official and civil institutions, and anyone with relevant information, to assist in ongoing investigations into the fate of children who went missing while in institutional care controlled by the former regime.

Conflicting Figures

Estimates by the Syrian Network for Human Rights indicate that 5,300 children were subjected to forced disappearance. Of these, reports state that approximately 2,300 children disappeared after being arrested by the Syrian regime during the war.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) records around 35,000 missing persons in Syria, including approximately 2,000 children under the age of 16. However, the actual number is believed to be much higher due to underreporting. The International Commission on Missing Persons estimates that at least 130,000 people have gone missing in Syria during the conflict—including children—from more than 60 countries.

With the fall of the Assad regime and the uncovering of facts about missing children, the case of Dr. Rania Al-Abbasi and her children became a catalyst for opening the file of local and international care institutions. At the time, journalistic reports and field investigations pointed to the direct involvement of these institutions in hiding children and falsifying their legal documentation. Dr. Rania Al-Abbasi and her six children were arrested in Damascus in 2013 by regime forces. Despite her family’s attempts to learn their fate, no confirmed information has ever surfaced.

Occupied Palestine: A Similar Pain in a Different Context

At the beginning of 2024, Israeli media circulated the story of an Israeli officer who kidnapped a baby girl from Gaza after her entire family was killed. He brought the infant to Israel before being killed in battle. The story raised numerous questions about the child’s identity and fate, and about the Israeli army’s involvement in the forced transfer of children from Gaza. This incident is part of a broader context of the disappearance of hundreds of Palestinian children and the growing number of international adoption offers for children from Gaza amidst harsh conditions that only exacerbate the suffering of Palestinian families. These cases reflect a phenomenon of forced adoption, which may be part of a wider systematic policy to use children as tools of war and to erase Palestinian identity.

Despite Israeli laws prohibiting international adoption of children, the Israeli government confirmed in 2019 that dozens of Palestinian children had been sent to European countries—without disclosing details or figures. This secrecy points to a continuation of colonial-era policies that used child separation as a tool for domination and cultural erasure. The case of the baby girl is thus part of this ongoing war against the Palestinian people.

Lebanon: A War Legacy That Remains Unresolved

During its years of civil war, Lebanon witnessed the forced disappearance of many children who were then illegally adopted internationally. A vast network of armed groups, official agencies, local mayors, doctors, and care and religious institutions facilitated these adoptions. The archives of Badael, a Lebanese association founded in 2014 to advocate for reform of the alternative care system and for the rights of those who were forcibly separated from parental care, document over 3,000 cases of illegal adoption. All collected data confirms that these practices were never truly in the best interests of the children—they constituted an organized illegal trade that left deep wounds for those who experienced international adoption, and for mothers left in the pain of separation and silence.

More than 20,000 children were adopted during Lebanon’s war years, some smuggled abroad via official land and air routes, others through dangerous sea routes on “death boats” or as part of drug and arms trafficking operations. While public opinion often viewed international adoption as a humanitarian act to save orphans or abandoned children, documentation and survivor testimonies clearly show that these were illegal practices intersecting with child trafficking.

One Thread… One Shared Wound

What connects these three contexts is that these children were not merely victims of individual circumstances but of oppressive political or colonial systems that invented a form of “charitable work” by separating children from their mothers and local environments. This served not only trafficking purposes but also as a tool of war aimed at dismantling local communities.

In Syria, children’s identities were erased in prison basements, then further obscured by placing them in care institutions—both local and international—and tampering with their official documents.

In Palestine, adoption was used as a tool to erase national identity.

In Lebanon, children were trafficked through illegal adoption and through placement in care institutions where they were exposed to all forms of abuse.

All of this has occurred under the guise of “charitable work” funded by international and local actors. This policy of forced separation consumes more than 80 percent of the Lebanese Ministry of Social Affairs’ budget.

These issues must not be seen as painful histories of the past. They are ongoing, unresolved files that demand accountability, recognition, and justice. No real national reconciliation or sustainable stability can be achieved without full truth-telling, acknowledgment of the surviving children—now young adults whose voices we barely hear—and the prosecution of those who facilitated or profited from their disappearance and exploitation.

Survivor testimonies confirm that most international adoptions were facilitated by profit-driven organizations (under the pretense of charitable work) in favor of foreign families—families often unfit for local adoption. Yet, adopting countries—mostly in the Global North—allowed these families to adopt children from the Global South through unlawful means, effectively legitimizing illegal practices in source countries.

Survivor testimonies have led to legal accountability in countries like the Netherlands and Denmark, pushing these governments to admit wrongdoing, halt international adoptions, and issue formal apologies.

In Lebanon, the logic of “charity” continues to justify violations against children, and the logic of forced separation continues to drain resources—resources that should instead be invested in supporting at-risk families and tackling poverty, a main driver of family separation. These children are not orphans—but are made into orphans.

We are no better off than Syria or Palestine, but we pretend otherwise.