22nd National Congress (Ba'ath Party)

The 22nd National Congress of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party (Arabic: المؤتمر الوطني الثانية والعشرين لحزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي al-mu’tamr al-waṭanī ath-thānīyah wal-‘ashrīn li-ḥizb al-ba‘ath al-‘arabī al-ishtirākī) was held on 10 April 2020 in Damascus, Syrian Arab Republic. It included representatives of the regional commands of all twenty party regional branches, including sixteen regional secretaries and twenty deputy regional secretaries, four of whom represented their regional command in the absence of their regional secretary. As per tradition, the 22nd National Congress was hosted by the National Secretary of the National Command and President of the Arab Union Bashar al-Assad.

As the 22nd National Congress began during the COVID-19 global pandemic, and shortly into the start of the pandemic's spread to the Arab Union, the primary focus of the National Congress concerned the party's response and corresponding policy toward the pandemic and the social and governmental responses necessary for its containment. As the ruling party of the federation and 17 of its republics, the decisions regarding the pandemic at the 22nd National Congress played a major part in the government of the Arab Union's official response to the pandemic. Shortly after the 22nd National Congress, the Arab Congress held a plenary session between 1 and 5 May, in which the Prime Minister and Ba'ath Party Deputy National Secretary Yahya Abdalati layed out the executive branch's pandemic response and economic relief plan, including a budget proposal, which passed virtually unanimously in Congress.