Syria: What hope for the new peace effort?

Following the 7 May US-Russian agreement to work towards an end of the violence engulfing Syria, Dr Haytham Manna, an outspoken member of Syria’s opposition who has long argued against foreign military intervention and in favour of a political track, will consider the key openings and obstacles lying ahead of this new push. Dr Manna will lay out his thoughts on the competing ambitions of regime and opposition forces, deteriorating domestic and regional fault lines, particularly deepening sectarianism, as well as his own vision for a way forward.

The event will mark the publication of ECFR’s latest policy brief, Syria: the Imperative of De-escalation. In this publication, ECFR policy fellows Julien Barnes-Dacey and Daniel Levy argue that a real diplomatic push – an inclusive process shorn of maximalist aims – is the best and only hope of salvaging Syria's future.

This policy brief will be available at ecfr.eu in the coming days.

Dr Haytham Manna, an academic and human rights activist, is Deputy Head of the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change (NCC), a coalition of opposition parties based in Syria, and the body’s representative abroad. The NCC opposes foreign military intervention in Syria, calling instead for a political solution to the crisis.

Julien Barnes-Dacey is a Senior Policy Fellow at the Middle East and North Africa programme at ECFR. Julien is the author of several publications for ECFR including ‘Lebanon: Containing spillover from Syria’