France on Tuesday, under pressure from humanitarian organizations, repatriated 15 women and 32 children held in jihadist detention camps in northeastern Syria.
“The minors have been handed over to the services in charge of child support and will be subject to medical and social surveillance,” said the French Foreign Ministry in a press release announcing the operation. “The adults have been handed over to the relevant judicial authorities,” he added.
This is the third major repatriation operation after that of July 5, 2022, when France repatriated 16 mothers and 35 minors, and October, which enabled the return of 15 women and 40 children.
The women and children repatriated near by Islamic State jihadists on Tuesday were in Kurdish-controlled Roj camp, about fifteen kilometers from the Iraqi and Turkish borders.
France was particularly hit in 2015 by jihadist attacks fueled by the Islamic State.
The French authorities thanked “the local administration in north-eastern Syria for their cooperation that made this operation possible”.
This operation comes just after the UN Committee against Torture condemned France for failing to return French nationals from detention camps in north-eastern Syria.
The committee was used by the families of these women and children in 2019 because France violated Articles 2 and 16 of the Convention against Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment by not proceeding to their return.
The French state, in its comments sent to the UN committee and cited in last week’s decision, had justified its repatriation policy on a case-by-case basis, stressing that the Convention does not require a country to protect its nationals in areas other than its own subject to jurisdiction.
However, the committee considered that if the French state “is not at the origin of the injuries suffered” by the women and children in the camps, “it always remains committed” to protecting them “from human rights abuses, taking all necessary and possible actions”.
France had already been condemned in 2022 by the Committee on the Rights of the Child and then by the European Court of Human Rights for its inaction on the repatriation of women and minors.
These French women had voluntarily gone to the areas controlled by jihadist groups in the Iraqi-Syrian zone. They were arrested when the Islamic State organization was overthrown in 2019.
From case to case
And many of their children were born in the camps.
When asked by AFP, the Quai d’Orsay did not specify how many children and women are expected to be repatriated.
Around 300 French minors who have been in areas where terrorist groups operate have returned to France, including 77 through repatriation, Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti said at a Senate hearing in early October.
Despite repeated admonitions from the Kurdish administration, most western countries have so far refused to repatriate their citizens from these camps, contenting themselves with repatriations in droplets and rubble for fear of possible terrorist attacks on their soil.
But legal remedies have multiplied in countries, while in camps violence is endemic and deprivations numerous.
Canada announced on Friday that it had approved the repatriation of six Canadian women and 13 children being held in northeastern Syria.
In November, the Dutch government returned 12 citizens and their 28 children, the largest exfiltration of jihadist families ever organized by the Netherlands.
In mid-December, a group of families of detained French nationals said 150 children were still “parked in Syrian detention camps”.