Recognizing Domicide as a War Crimein Syria: Dr. Bree Akesson Weighs In

The GAWB research group is proud to highlight Dr. Bree Akesson’s contribution to an important international conversation featured in a recent Deutsche Welle (DW) article by Omar Albam and Cathrin Schaer examining whether “domicide” — the deliberate destruction of homes — should be recognized as a prosecutable war crime.

Screenshot from DW article "Syria: Could making 'domicide' a war crime bring justice?" (October 4, 2025).

The article explores the systematic demolition of neighborhoods in Syria, where millions have been displaced and prevented from returning. Survivors describe not only the loss of shelter, but the erasure of identity, belonging, and memory — harms that often remain invisible in international justice frameworks.

Dr. Akesson, whose research focuses on children, families, and home in contexts of war and displacement, brings a critical perspective to conversations about domicide. She has long emphasized that home is not merely a physical structure; it is a site of safety, kinship, culture, and continuity. When homes are intentionally destroyed, the consequences ripple far beyond the material.

Her scholarship — including co-authorship of From Bureaucracy to Bullets: Extreme Domicide and the Right to Home — has helped define domicide not as collateral damage, but as a strategy of war with long-term impacts on return, reconstruction, and justice.

In the DW article, Dr. Akesson draws attention to the scale and intent behind such destruction. Families in cities like Homs and Aleppo have seen not just their houses razed, but entire neighborhoods depopulated, looted, or reallocated — often with the explicit goal of preventing return. As she notes, these acts are part of broader campaigns of dispossession, fragmentation, and demographic engineering.

The growing movement to codify domicide under international criminal law reflects this emerging recognition. Legal scholars, activists, and UN mandates have begun treating large-scale housing destruction as a distinct violation tied to displacement, cultural erasure, and long-term instability. However, accountability remains elusive in the absence of legal mechanisms that reflect the full harm done.

For GAWB, this is not only a matter of law — it is a matter of lived experience. Our research with displaced families around the world has consistently shown that rebuilding lives depends on more than shelter provision. Without acknowledgment of what was taken — place, history, and the possibility of return — neither reconstruction nor reconciliation is complete.

By bringing research and testimony into public forums like DW, Dr. Akesson and our collaborators are helping to shift the debate. Domicide is not an abstraction — it is a tool of war that destroys futures as much as buildings.

We are encouraged to see growing momentum behind recognizing domicide as a war crime and remain committed to advancing research and advocacy that center the voices of those most affected.