CHILDREN STRANDED IN AL HOL REFUGEE CAMP ARE VICTIMS, INTERNATIONAL AID CHIEF SAYS
▶ Peter Maurer, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, calls for help to tackle child protection crisis
Thousands of children stuck in legal and political limbo in a notorious refugee camp in Syria face a bleak future, an international aid chief has told The National.
About 22,000 children living in Al Hol are being deprived of a normal childhood, said Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
He said they were trapped in appalling conditions while humanitarians focused on providing the bare essentials instead of placing them in safe, stable surroundings.
“This is an environment in which they shouldn’t be growing up,” he said.
“We are trying our best with other humanitarian organisations and the Kurdish local authorities to prevent the worst.
“But when you can only work to prevent the worst in any environment, that is a situation that is becoming increasingly difficult.”
The overcrowded camp is home to about 56,000 people, mostly women and children, who live in miserable conditions.
They have been stranded there since 2019 after the defeat of ISIS in Syria on the grounds that they are, or are suspected to be, relatives of ISIS fighters.
North-eastern Syria is controlled by the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
ICRC figures show the region continues to host nearly 87,000 people who have fled other parts of the country, in addition to long-term refugees from Iraq and stranded women and children from more than 60 countries.
About 10,000 of Al Hol’s population are non-Arab foreigners, while the rest are mostly from Syria or Iraq.
The camp’s primary healthcare clinic is run by ICRC’s local affiliate, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.
Mr Maurer, who has been president of the Geneva-based organisation since 2012, said
Al Hol was one of the biggest child protection crises in the world today.
Many countries have refused to repatriate children whose parents are suspected of having collaborated with or fought for ISIS.
Some of them were born in Syria, while others travelled there with their families.
Several countries, such as France and Russia, have allowed some women and children to return.
Others do not want to allow citizens who are associated with or sympathetic to extremists to return.
Mr Maurer said the international community’s refusal to tackle the problem was unacceptable.
He said many of the children living at Al Hol were effectively in detention.
“Children stranded or detained
are, first and foremost, victims,” he said.
“They are victims, no matter what they or their parents might have done or stand accused of.
“The world cannot continue to look away while children draw their first and last breaths in camps or grow up stateless and in limbo.”
This month, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said his country was determined to repatriate all of the families in the Syrian camp after security checks were completed.
But he also urged the international community to help Iraq to set up reintegration programmes for those who are being vetted.
Mr Maurer said the children of Al Hol did not have the documentation needed to prevent statelessness.
“Well, first and foremost,
let me just say that nobody should be stateless,” he said.
“This is unhelpful and unlawful in terms of international humanitarian law.
“We can recognise that states have other considerations which they have to take.
“But I do make an important point that keeping the situation in a hole, as it is, and
believing that this will eventually solve the problem is not what we consider a positive approach.”
Mr Maurer said he was particularly concerned about the mental health of the children at the camp.
This was despite the help of a psychiatric and psychosocial support programme run by the Red Cross since 2020.
The activities are adapted to address the needs of children living in Al Hol with the aim of building and strengthening their self-esteem and selfconfidence.
“I have been impressed, very frankly, also to meet some of the kids who show really extraordinary results with these programmes,” he said. “But, of course, it doesn’t solve the problem at the origin.”
The UN children’s fund is leading an effort in the camp to show children immersed in an extremist ideology that there are other ways.
But there are some mothers in Al Hol who still endorse extremist ideas.
In the past two years, the UN and rights activists in Syria have reported dozens of killings of camp residents by ISIS sympathisers or sleeper cells because victims were not following the extremist line.
Most of the victims were Iraqi or Syrian.
Conditions in the camp have deteriorated, but Mr Maurer said humanitarian workers were simply trying to prevent the situation from going from bad to worse.
“This is an unsustainable situation,” he said.
“These people live in miserable conditions in a camp where there is no due process of law.”
The world cannot continue to look away while children draw their first and last breaths in camps
PETER MAURER
ICRC president