UN agency calls for repatriation of 22,000 foreign children in northeast Syria
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) - The United Nations children's agency UNICEF called for the repatriation of all children from northeast Syria, after at least three died in a fire in the notorious al-Hol camp over the weekend.
“In and around the al-Hol camp in the northeast of Syria, there are more than 22,000 foreign children of at least 60 nationalities who languish in camps and prisons, in addition to many thousands of Syrian children,” Ted Chaiban, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement on Sunday.
“Children in al-Hol are faced not only with the stigma they are living with but also with very difficult living conditions where basic services are scarce or in some cases unavailable.”
Chaiban said the local Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) should do everything possible to get children home from northeast Syria through the repatriation of foreign children back to their countries of origin in a safe and dignified way or by integrating Syrian children back into their local communities.
“We call on all [UN] member states to provide children – who are their citizens or born to their nationals – with civil documentation to prevent statelessness,” Chaiban said. “This is in line with the best interests of the child and in compliance with international standards.”
Four people were killed and 18 injured in the crowded camp after a gas stove exploded on Saturday night. Al-Hol now holds around 62,000 people, many of them women and children.
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UNICEF includes Iraqis among the foreign children in the camps in northeast Syria, Juliette Touma, the director of communications in the Middle East for UNICEF confirmed to Kurdistan 24.
The majority of the people in al-Hol camp are either Syrian or Iraqis.
According to older UN data from July 2020, al-Hol had a population of just over 65,400, of which 53 percent were children under the age of 12. Of these, 47 percent (30,573) were Iraqs, 38 percent Syrians (24,914), and just 15 percent from outside the region – mostly adult foreigners who traveled to Syria or Iraq to join the so-called Islamic State.
The camp, administered by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has recently seen an increase in assassinations and other violent attacks.
Local authorities decided in early October to expedite the departure of displaced Syrian families as part of a new reform program.
Local Kurdish-led authorities in northern Syria have strongly and repeatedly urged foreign states to take back their nationals who joined ISIS, including women and their children. But plans announced in the past to repatriate the thousands of displaced Iraqis now in al-Hol appear to have been either delayed or annulled outright by Iraqi authorities.
Editing by Joanne Stocker-Kelly