The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

The Child Victims of ISIS

Repatriating the Residents of Syria’s Detention Camps

Three years ago, a global coalition of countries led by the United States retook most of the territory in Iraq and Syria controlled by the Islamic State. Once ISIS was defeated on the battlefield, the world moved on. Left unanswered was the question of what to do about the people, including thousands of children, who had come from abroad, either voluntarily or through coercion, to live under ISIS rule and were now abandoned by their governments.

Many of the women and children, and a small number of men, ended up in two detention camps in the middle of the desert in northeast Syria, where they remain today, with no way out. Some of the camps’ residents had been willing adherents to ISIS, whereas others were victims of trafficking and online grooming. Still others were taken as children to join ISIS or lived in ISIS-controlled territory and were displaced, co-opted, or coerced into the control of the group.

The larger of the two camps, Al Hol, was initially built for Iraqi refugees in 1991; the smaller, Roj, was established in 2014, also to house families fleeing Iraq. Both camps expanded in earnest in 2019, after the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) conquered Baghouz, the last holdout of ISIS in Syria. Estimates of the camps’ population vary, but the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) puts the combined total at over 60,000 people, with more than 80 percent being women and children. In Al Hol, 50 percent of the population is under the age of 12 (an estimated 30,000 children), and at Roj, it is 55 percent, according to the charity Save the Children. Both camps are defined by their sheer lawlessness and insecurity. Children living there experience a gamut of harms, including violence, hunger, sickness, and the lack of any education.

 

 

Source: Foreign Affairs

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