ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Tens of thousands of Iraqi children and minors from around 60 countries could be stuck in northeast Syria (Rojava) camps for relatives of suspected Islamic State (ISIS) fighters for up to three decades unless governments step up the pace of their repatriation efforts, Save The Children warned on Wednesday.
"It will take 30 years before foreign children stuck in unsafe camps in North East Syria can return home if repatriations continue at the current rate," the charity said in a statement coinciding with the third anniversary of the defeat of the group’s so-called caliphate in Baghouz, Syria, on March 23, 2019.
The majority of the women and children who live in the overcrowded Kurdish-run al-Hol and Roj displacement camps in northeast Syria were transferred in 2019 following the defeat of ISIS’ last stronghold in eastern Deir ez-Zor.
Around 56,000 Syrians, Iraqis and third country nationals, mostly women and children, more than half of whom are under the age of 18, have been detained in al-Hol camp alone without access to due process, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in January.
According to Save The Children, 18,000 Iraqi minors and 7,300 children from 60 other countries are held in these Kurdish-controlled camps, predominantly housing relatives of jihadists.
“Children have been stuck in these terrible camps for at least three years now - some even longer. At the rate foreign governments are going, we will see some children reach middle age before they are able to leave these camps and return home,” Sonia Khush, the charity's Syria response director, said. "The longer children are left to fester in Al-Hol and Roj, the more dangers they face."
Murders and accidental deaths are frequent occurrences in the camps which lack a system of law and order. In 2021 alone, Save the Children added, 74 children died including eight who were murdered.
A Save the Children report on the need to repatriate foreign children in al-Hol and Roj camps, published in September, also found that only 40 percent of children in al-Hol are receiving an education and in Roj, 55 percent of households reported being aware of child labour among children aged under 11.
"These children have done nothing wrong," Khush continued. "When will leaders take responsibility and bring them home?"
The Kurdish autonomous administration has repeatedly called on foreign states to repatriate their citizens but Western countries continue to cite security concerns as an impediment to action. In February, a highly critical UK parliamentary report criticised the British government for its refusal to repatriate nationals currently detained in northeast Syria.
Earlier this month, 800 Iraqi refugees returned home from northeast Syria with hundreds more to follow, according to a Syrian official in the region's Kurdish semi-autonomous administration.
The majority had been living in villages bordering Iraq, under the control of the Kurdish-led forces that rule regions of north and northeast Syria.
Also on Wednesday, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) General Command warned in a statement that countries that provided assistance to the military operation at the time should not now turn their backs on the region.
"The absence of a clear, comprehensive long-term international plan increases human and material losses and allow ISIS to strengthen its organisation," it said, citing the recent ISIS attack on a prison in Hasaka in January.
The Kurdish force also blamed those countries that are still reluctant to repatriate their citizens held in camps and prisons for suspected ISIS members and their relatives, noting the "narrow approaches of some countries and their unwillingness to assume their responsibilities by repatriating their nationals."
