It is five years since peaceful protests against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad started in Damascus.
The uprising quickly escalated into a civil war between the Syrian government and various rebel factions, killing at least 250,000 and displacing many more.
Similar movements in the region, later called the Arab Spring, led to the ousting of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia.
Five years on, people across the region have told the BBC how the uprising and the political divisions and economic turmoil that followed have affected their lives.
Syria's civil war
"I had to leave my pregnant wife behind. It was too dangerous for me to stay," saysMajdy Al-Kassem, who fled Syria in early 2015 and now lives in the UK.
Majdy studied English literature in his hometown Idlib in north-western Syria when peaceful anti-government protests erupted in 2011. He and fellow students joined the demonstrations.
"In the first six months protesters were not armed, but the security forces started to shoot at people and come to their houses to arrest them," he says.
Some of the protests turned into armed insurgency and following violent clashes abrutal and complex civil war broke out across most of the country.
"One of my teachers was killed by a sniper and in the following years a lot of my friends died in prison. I was afraid that somebody who saw me at the demonstration would frame me," he says.
A month after Majdy fled, a coalition of Islamist rebel forces, supported by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, seized Idlib from the Syrian government.
"It's a little bit safer now because there is no fighting in the city itself, but your house can always be hit by Russian or Syrian government air strikes. Many houses in our neighbourhood were destroyed.
"My family is in a very bad situation now. They often don't have the most basic things like water, electricity and petrol."