France repatriates 40 children, 15 women from Syria camps

PARIS -- France has repatriated 40 children and 15 women from camps in northeast Syria holding family members of suspected "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) fighters, the foreign ministry said on Thursday (October 20).

"The minors have been transferred to child aid services," the ministry said in a statement. "The adults have been handed to judicial authorities."

"France expresses its thanks to local authorities … for their co-operation which has made this operation possible," the ministry said.

It marked the largest such transfer since July when France, following pressure from campaigners, returned 35 children and 16 mothers from the Kurdish-run al-Hol and Roj camps.

The French government had long refused mass repatriations of the hundreds of French children detained in Kurdish-run camps, dealing with them on a case-by-case basis that rights groups criticised as deliberately slow.

"Bringing home these children will ensure they can start to recover from their experiences and begin a normal life," said Beat Rohr, Save the Children's interim country director in Syria, following the French announcement.

Last week, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Paris over its refusal to return two women and said it should promptly re-examine the request by the women's parents to let them come home.

But it did not issue a blanket ruling that France return all citizens held in Syria since the fall of the ISIS "caliphate", as sought by rights groups and Western allies including the United States.

Western countries have faced a dilemma over how to handle their citizens detained in Syria since the end of military operations against ISIS there in 2019.

Thousands of extremists in Europe decided to join the group as fighters, often taking their wives and children to live in the "caliphate" declared in territory conquered in Iraq and Syria.

Before July, France had prioritised its security over welfare concerns for the detained, pointing to a series of attacks by ISIS extremists, including the November 2015 assaults on Paris that left 130 people dead.

Repatriation pace picks up

Also on Thursday, a Russian delegation in Syria took 38 children from families of suspected ISIS fighters for repatriation, AFP reported.

Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria handed over the children, "most of whom are orphans", to the Russian delegation, Kurdish foreign affairs official Khaled Ibrahim told a press conference in the city of Qamishli.

The children were taken from al-Hol and Roj camps to the regime-controlled Qamishli airport, where they boarded a plane under heavy Russian security.

Kurdish authorities have repeatedly called on countries to repatriate their citizens from crowded camps and bear their share of the burden of responsibility for their care and rehabilitation.

But many have been reluctant to take responsibility for them, wary of security threats and domestic political backlash.

The pace of repatriations has picked up recently, however, with Iraq repatriating 161 families from al-Hol camp on Tuesday, and Germany announcing October 5 it was bringing home 12 of its citizens from nearby Roj camp.

Tajikistan, Belgium and Iraq are among the nations that have repatriated some or all of their citizens from the Syrian camps this year.