France repatriates sick French child from camp in northeast Syria

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – French authorities this week repatriated a seven-year-old French national, Taymia, who is ill and a resident of a notorious camp in northeastern Syria.

“Taymia, a 7-year-old French girl with a heart condition, was repatriated from Al Hol camp last night,” Ludovic Riviere, her lawyer, tweeted on Thursday.

“Her siblings and her mother remain stranded in the camp, as well as about 300 French children. They must also be urgently repatriated.”

Riviere's earlier efforts to repatriate the girl had been unsuccessful.

On 21 April, ten civil society organizations called on France to repatriate Taymia and other children back to France.

Taymia had a double heart defect, requiring urgent and specialized care, which she was not able to receive in Syria.

The organizations said at least 300 French children are held in the al-Hol and Roj camps. The former is a sprawling facility where the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) detains tens of thousands of affiliates of the so-called Islamic State group and their children. Roj camp is also held by the SDF.

In total, there are 13,500 detained foreign women and children in three makeshift camps in northeastern Syria, according to a report of the International Crisis Group (ICG) published on 7 April.

Local Kurdish-led authorities in northern Syria have urged foreign states to take back their nationals who fought for the terrorist organization, including women and children.

Some countries have repatriated a number of their nationals on humanitarian grounds.

However, due to the new coronavirus pandemic, plans to repatriate foreigners have been mostly halted.

“While European officials claimed that the pandemic meant a halt in repatriation, the case of this little girl shows that European governments can and should do more to accelerate repatriation of their national children and women… starting with the most vulnerable” Dareen Khalifa, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, told Kurdistan 24.

There are fears that the coronavirus could hit Syria’s northeast hard since the healthcare system has been left in tatters by nine years of civil war. Overcrowded camps that lack clean water, adequate food, or reliable medical services would be affected even worse should the virus spread among them.

So far, there has been one confirmed coronavirus case in northeastern Syria.

“Europe will not be insulated from the consequences of leaving the SDF to deal with this challenge on its own,” Khalifa warned.

“The strain of guarding so many detainees is overwhelming the SDF. They have been left to guard and feed tens of thousands of ISIS detainees and affiliated family members.”

“The SDF’s resources are woefully lacking and their capacity is waning. And for mere political reasons many of the detainees’ home countries refuse to even consider taking them back.”

Thomas McClure, a Syria-based researcher at the Rojava Information Center, told Kurdistan 24 that only a small percentage of women and children have been successfully repatriated so far due to a “total lack of serious effort by foreign powers, and Western European countries in particular.”

As a result, the local Kurdish-led authorities said they would focus on building a new camp for children and wives of Islamic State members and setting up an international court to prosecute members of the terrorist group inside Syria.

“Anything that relieves pressure on the camps are very much needed, we already saw riots in ISIS-linked prisoners (on 29 March) possible linked to coronavirus and difficult humanitarian situation.”

McClure also added that the closure of the border between northeastern Syria and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq due to the coronavirus measures “had a negative impact on healthcare system, including in the camps, such as in the al-Hol camp where they stripped back to essential services to prevent spread COVID-19.”

“Anything which presents a solution to the intense pressure on the camps is beneficial, including repatriation.”

Editing by Kosar Nawzad