Our History
The Syria Civil Defense (The White Helmets) was founded in 2013 in Syria by a diverse group of volunteers. The aim was to respond to aerial and land bombings and reduce the gap left by the Syrian regime’s withdrawal of basic government service like firefighting and healthcare.
Our group of volunteers has expanded to 3300 female and male volunteers, operating in all areas we can access. Our volunteers strive to save civilian lives and help our communities recover from the impact of the war. We have managed to save more than 128,000 people so far and lost 308 volunteers, most of them victims in double-tap attacks while they rescuing civilians from under the rubble.
Our Commitment
We remain steadfast in our commitment to protecting civilians and ensuring their safety. We will continue to document and provide evidence of war crimes until justice is served for every Syrian family. Only then can our communities begin to heal from the scars of war and move forward to live in peace.
Our Journey
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Early 2012
Our Development: Individual Initiatives for Rescue and Assistance
After about a year of the peaceful popular movement demanding change in 2011, and the escalation of military attacks by the Syrian regime and withdrawal of government services, many Syrians took individual initiatives to provide rescue and assistance to their local communities. They got together to carry out rescue operations and help the affected communities.
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End of 2012
Volunteer Teams for Civil Defense Operations
With the escalation of military attacks launched by the Syrian regime using various weapons, air strikes and explosive barrels, there was an urgent need for organized civil defense work. Local volunteer teams were established at the end of 2012. The teams comprised brave individuals willing to risk their lives to save others. Their work focused on rescuing people from under the rubble of bombed buildings, providing first aid, and putting out fires in war-torn areas.
One incident marked a turning point for us when in 2012, Syrian regime forces prevented a volunteer firefighting team in Aleppo from responding to a fire in a residential neighborhood on pretext that the fire was in an area outside of the regime's control. This event led to the formation of the first independent firefighting brigade that challenged the regime’s orders and extinguished the fire.
The First Civil Defense Center
It was a turning point for Mounir Moustafa (who later became the deputy manager of the Syria Civil Defense (SCD) and the other members in his team. They knew that by rejecting their superiors’ orders, they would be perceived as enemies of the regime, and their lives would be at risk. On that same day, they defected and set up an independent emergency response civil defense center in Aleppo province to serve all Syrians.
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Early 2013
Meetings and Coordinating Efforts
By 2013, many groups of volunteers had heard from each other, and the volunteer teams held meetings to coordinate their activities. This was the first step towards creating a more organized response. During the time, the local councils established in governorates, cities and towns played a role in creating communication channels with most of the centers operating in the field to coordinate work among them, without direct affiliation of the teams to the local councils.
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2013
Establishment of Centers and Specialized Teams
As the civil defense efforts gained momentum, more civil defense centers were established. These centers served as centers for coordinating rescue operations and training specialized teams on search and rescue, and emergency medical services. During this stage, the civil defense teams received trainings on search and rescue and first aid in Turkey and Jordan, and the teams obtained some equipment from international donors.
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2014
Establishment of Civil Defense Directorates (2014)
With the growing need for civil defense services beyond individual areas, it was necessary to establish Civil Defense Directorates in Syrian governorates. The directorates helped coordinate civil defense efforts within the geographical area of operations, however, the directorates were not connected to each other. They attempted to coordinate efforts with each other but were stranded due to the Assad regime’s siege of several Syrian governorates.
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25 October 2014
The Founding Meeting
The founding meeting was held on October 25, 2014, in Adana in Turkey and around 70 Syrian team leaders participated in the meeting. The outcome was establishing the Charter of Principles developed to organize work under international humanitarian law and establish an organization to serve all Syrians. The name “Syria Civil Defense” was given with the slogan from a verse in the Holy Qur'an, “to save a life is to save all of humanity.”
Famous for their distinctive white helmets worn during search and rescue operations, the “Syria Civil Defense” was given the name “The White Helmets” in early 2015. By 2023, the number of volunteers has increased to reach around 3300 volunteers including more than 330 female volunteers.
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2015
Administrative Offices in Turkey
As the war raged in Syria, the SCD established administrative and logistical support offices in Turkey, to provide a safer environment for organizational and logistical activities.
Building international partnerships and calling ourselves The “The White Helmets”
At the beginning of 2015, the name “White Helmets” was given to the SCD because of the distinctive white helmets of volunteers. Our white helmets became a symbol of our humanitarian work and rescue efforts.
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2015-2018
Establishment of general management offices and institutional structure
During this period, the SCD focused on building a more robust institutional structure, including general administration offices, and this allowed for better operational management and effective response to crises.
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2019-2022
External Offices
With the expansion of the SCD operations, it established offices in several countries outside Syria and Turkey, such as Canada, the Netherlands, and the United States of America, to strengthen international presence.
When volunteers started responding to strikes in 2012, their experience and equipment were very modest, and they were often digging to pull their families and neighbors with their bare hands from the rubble. In 2013, the teams received specialized professional training on rescue techniques and urban search in populated areas in Turkey.
The teams and programs developed rapidly with the institution, and experience accumulated in a way that helped build a professional organization combining practical and theoretical experience. The work expanded to include 5 basic programs with sub-programs (search, rescue, and firefighting, health, community resilience, justice and accountability, and protection).
The SCD works
in a very volatile environment in Syria with an ongoing crisis and programs are still developing to expand the scope of influence in Syrian communities, support the resilience of communities, increase awareness of the Syrian issue and recovery and reconstruction. The SCD believes that there will never be a sustainable peace in Syria without accountability and justice, hence, it documents human rights violations for use in accountability, preventing impunity and achieving justice for all Syrians.
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Now and beyond
As Syrians civilians still under attack, our mission is still far from complete, and our heroes are still committed to providing their outstanding efforts to help rescuing lives, as well as supporting communities.
Help Us Save More
Lives
Stories from the foundation
Mounir in Aleppo
Munir is a firefighter, and he was working in the Aleppo Fire Brigade in 2012, when...
Munir al-Mustafa
Deputy Director of the Syrian Civil Defense
Mounir says, “in times of war, many institutions collapse, so imagine how difficult it is to build an institution during war? The obstacles were too great to build our capacity, and even now we are still working to develop and improve the Syrian Civil Defense."
Mounir in Aleppo
Munir is a firefighter, and he was working in the Aleppo Fire Brigade in 2012, when his team was ordered not to respond to a fire in a predominantly Kurdish area outside the regime’s control. But Mounir and his team defied their leadership and headed to put out the fire.
It was a turning point for Munir and the other members of his team. They knew that by rejecting orders of their superiors, they had become enemies of the regime, and their lives were in danger. On the same day, they established an emergency response center with few equipment. Their experience and skills enabled them to respond to bombing operations and save lives trapped under the rubble. Mounir’s story paved the way for establishing one of the first civil defense centers in Aleppo.
Raed in Jisr Al-Shughour
A few hundred kilometers away, Raed was working as a salesman in Idlib. In 2011, he...
Raed Al Saleh
The Head Of the Syria Civil Defence
“in 2013, we worked for 23 hours and were unable to evacuate the injured, or recover the martyrs, or clean the marketplace, but in 2016 we did everything and restored life to normal. That day I said to my colleague who was with me, “What we have done equals what we have done in our entire lives. What more could I ask for?”
The development of our organization filled us with both hope and pain. In the first Darkush incident after finishing work, I had a nervous breakdown and was taken to the hospital. When I came back to my senses, the doctor told me, “I lost consciousness and was very delirious.” I told him, “We must work. We cannot stop. No.” "We cannot just see people go like this; we have to save them." After this incident, we worked a lot, and thank God we have seen the outcomes.”
Raed in Jisr Al-Shughour
A few hundred kilometers away, Raed was working as a salesman in Idlib. In 2011, he was forced to flee Syria and devoted his time to humanitarian relief efforts on the Syrian-Turkish border. He then gradually began working again inside Syria, where he helped secure shelter for internally displaced people and transported injured civilians for treatment in Turkey. Through this work, Raed heard about the training offered in the field of civil defense and attended one of the first training courses in Turkey in 2013.
During the training, search and rescue experts showed Raed the difference this work can make in the lives of civilians trapped under the rubble of daily airstrikes. Realizing its importance, Raed used his knowledge and experience to establish civil defense centers in Idlib. The first center was established in Al-Yaqubiyah in the countryside of Jisr Al-Shughur, followed by centers in Binnish and Maarat Al-Numan. Civil defense centers were established throughout Idlib Governorate by working with the local councils during that period.
On the morning of Eid al-Adha in 2013, an explosion happened in a village near Darkush, close to the Syrian-Turkish border. Raed quickly got into his car and went to the site of the explosion. The site of the explosion was a market crowded due to the Eid, and when he arrived, he saw many bodies, some of which were burnt and some dismembered. The Syrian Civil Defense teams were not advanced and were in the process of being established and did not have a lot of equipment. On that day, they used buckets to extinguish the fire. More than 120 civilians were martyred that day, and more than 400 others were injured. The city’s residents cannot forget that day.
Three years after that incident, on another Eid al-Adha day, Raed was visiting one of the Syrian Civil Defense centers in Aleppo. He received news of multiple air strikes on that same market. He immediately got into the car and went to Darkush. I arrived within 3 hours, but he could not believe what he saw with his own eyes. Specialized teams from the organization rescued the injured, treated them, removed the rubble, and were washing the market. When he arrived, there was no sign of the bombing.
Ammar in Al-Safira
Ammar was an English teacher from Al-Safira, a large town located to the east of Aleppo...
Ammar Al Salmo
the manager of the Syria Civil Defence for Aleppo
“I was like anyone dreaming of graduating from university and teaching in my town’s school and having a family and children. I never imagined that I would become a part of an organization with thousands of volunteers working together to save lives and serve their communities. My life has changed radically. The hardest feeling is when we are unable to help people in need, I hope that day will come when we work in all Syria. I know we have a long way to go, but I believe that day will come.”
Ammar in Al-Safira
Ammar was an English teacher from Al-Safira, a large town located to the east of Aleppo and inhabited by about one 100,000 people. The regime responded brutally to loss of control over Al-Safira in 2013, stopping all services, leaving people in darkness without electricity, and pro-regime militias started to kidnap people and drowned many in the city's wells.
Initially, Ammar joined an armed group of locals to push back against the regime’s aggression against their community; However, when he saw many people being killed and others suffering due to the lack of medical care, Ammar decided to work to save people’s lives. He was elected head of the newly formed local council to provide basic services such as electricity, water, and emergency medical aid, and to recover the bodies of the martyrs and provide a proper burial.
Al-Safira fell into the hands of the regime in 2013, which forced Ammar to leave for the old city of Aleppo, where he established a civil defense center in Bab al-Nayrab. Local residents offered to join, and began working to provide rescue, supplies, and firefighting services to the population. In February 2014, they received the first batches of machinery and professional tools to help in their work.