Syria’s Missing Children: The Role of International Charities in Child Disappearances

Wed Oct 22 2025 11:48:37 GMT+0300 (Eastern European Summer Time)

Investigative report reveals the complicity of SOS Children's Villages in the fate of thousands of children lost during Syria's civil war.

In the wake of the Assad regime's collapse, families are still searching for over 3,700 missing children, many taken by charities during the civil war. The SOS Children's Villages organization has been accused of working under the Assad regime and mismanaging orphans, with allegations of children being falsely documented and political manipulation. The plight of families like Reem al-Kari highlights the ongoing struggle for closure as they seek to find their lost children amidst broken systems and bureaucratic challenges.

Reem al-Kari and her cousin Lama are searching through dozens of photos of children spread out on a desk. Lama thinks she spots one with a likeness to Karim, Reem's missing son.

Karim was two-and-a-half when he and his father disappeared, in 2013 during Syria's civil war, as they ran an errand. He is one of more than 3,700 children still missing since the fall, 10 months ago, of the Assad dictatorship. He would now be 15.

Are his eyes green? asks the man behind the desk, the new manager of Lahan Al Hayat, a Syrian-run children's shelter which former first lady Asma al-Assad helped establish in 2013.

Lahan Al Hayat is one of several Syrian childcare facilities which were used to hold the children of detained parents during the 2011-2024 civil war. Instead of re-homing the children with their relatives, the youngsters were held in orphanages and used as political pawns. In some cases, the children were falsely recorded as orphans, or their identities changed, making tracing them then and now all the more difficult.

When Assad's dictatorship suddenly collapsed in December, journalists, activists, and families had access to sources, locations, and documents previously unimaginable under his decades-long rule. The BBC World Service has worked with investigative media organization Lighthouse Reports and five other outlets to build a database of 323 children hidden by the Syrian regime from their relatives in a network of orphanages.

Analysis of these records shows the organization running orphanages which took more children than any other was an Austria-headquartered charity, SOS Children's Villages International.

We spoke to more than 50 SOS whistleblowers. Several said most of the senior positions at SOS in Syria had been appointed directly by the Assad palace, and that Asma al-Assad... had an influential role in the organization.

SOS has already admitted, following an internal review, that 140 children without proper documentation were taken in by SOS Syria between 2013 and 2018. It has said 104 of these were subsequently taken back by the Syrian intelligence services or the Social Affairs Ministry.

Many parents still have no idea what happened to their children. The quagmire of falsified and lost records for Syria's missing children means surviving mothers and fathers are left to hunt from one institution to the next for any information at all. This includes Reem, looking for her son Karim.

For Reem, the search for Karim continues. As does the frustration. It's been six months since the liberation, and yet there's still no clear path for mothers looking for their children.