By Abdulrahman al-Masri Internet in Syria remains critical – and challenged. Footage from Vice on HBO’s latest documentary, Assad’s Syria, shows a large web of exposed and intertwined wires in the street of a destroyed Aleppo neighborhood, an area that witnessed intense fighting between Syrian rebels and regime forces in late 2016. [caption id="attachment_4516" align="aligncenter"...
Join us on 30 September 2016 at Ottawa’s Peace Festival as we share our experience with PeaceTech and the Syrian conflict. The conflict in Syria has been fought on, and through, the internet. Since 2012, SalamaTech has helped hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians to stay...
The British Council recently published a new report looking at peacetech initiatives responding to the Syrian crisis. Our own projects – SalamaTech and Be Heard – were featured in the study, which also quoted our Executive Director, Deirdre Collings. The report, entitled “Innovative Peacebuiding in Syria: A Scoping Study of the Strategic...
With all the talk of countering violent extremism (CVE), it can be easy to lose sight of the most important aspect of any conflict: people. To actually affect change and help at-risk youth, for example, to find an alternative path, those kids must become the...
While the Syrian civil war continues to rage more than five years on, the challenges in helping those caught in conflict grow. The U.N. estimates that 13.5 million Syrians are in need of assistance - their situations vary, and some, such as refugees, are easier...
There are many unsung heroes in Syria. We are lucky enough to work with some of them. Earlier this week, one of our colleagues near Damascus had his house hit by a mortar. The day after, he continued his work with us, as usual, helping...
Facebook Messenger has started rolling out Secret Conversations, a feature that enables end to end encryption for conversations within Facebook Messenger. Secret Conversations is built on OpenWhisper Systems' Signal strong encryption protocol and is open publicly for auditing by any external security experts. You can also...
An airstrike destroyed northwestern Idlib’s only Civil Defense center on Wednesday. The attack was allegedly a single missile strike from a Soviet-era warplane - a signature plane of the Syrian military. A witness mentions "The center was completely destroyed after sustaining a direct hit,” The damages include five injured...
Approximately an hour after the explosions that rocked...
Salamatech's own Basel Mattar was featured on LCC's magazine, Rising for Freedom, where he discussed the effects of WhatApp on Syrians and how reliant people are to the service. The relationship between Syrians and WhatsApp has evolved to a point where normal users are now nicknaming it as...