Oussama Chourbaji was exiled to France in 2005 after he had been imprisoned by the Assad regime authorities in Damascus. Oussama is one of the founding members of the Syrian Non-Violence Movement. Four years after participating in the creation of the Syrian National Council, he has distanced himself from politics to return to his primary mission: to transmit the principles of democracy and non-violence struggles to Syrian society. He founded the AFAQ Academy in 2013 to achieve this purpose.

The AFAQ Academy is an educational and training organisation (for International Humanitarian Law, Communication Skills, Project Management, Community Organisation, Political Science and other training) based in the city of Gaziantep in Turkey and Syria. He regularly visits Syria, in the region of Aleppo and Idlib.

He is 38 years old and has 5 children. He is the editor of the New Syrian Voices (NSV) network.

In 2011, Oussama obtained a Ph.D degree in Molecular Biology from Paris University and worked at several hospitals in Paris.