Finland violated rights of children in Syria camps: UN experts

GENEVA: Finland violated the rights of Finnish children left to languish for years in life-threatening conditions in Syrian camps for family members of suspected jihadists, a UN watchdog said Wednesday.

“Finland has the responsibility and power to protect the Finnish children in the Syrian camps against an imminent risk to their lives by taking action to repatriate them,” the UN child rights committee said in a statement.

In the findings, which echoed a previous ruling concerning France’s responsibility towards French children stuck in the camps, the committee said, “prolonged detention of child victims in life-threatening conditions amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.”

The committee, whose 18 independent experts are tasked with monitoring the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, issued the findings after considering a case filed on behalf of six Finnish children currently held at the Al-Hol camp in Syria’s northeast.

Since their relatives brought the case to the committee in 2019, three of the children have been able to leave the camp on their own initiative with their mother, and eventually arrived back in Finland.

“The remaining three child victims, currently between five and six years old, are still detained in closed camps in a war-like zone,” the committee said.

The petition from their relatives also mentioned 33 other Finnish children held at the camp without access to legal assistance.

Housing around 56,000 people, Al-Hol is the largest of a number of camps in the region holding relatives of suspected jihadists, mostly women and children.

Most are Syrians or Iraqis, but an estimated 10,000 are wives and children of Islamic State fighters from other countries, many of whom are still thought to be highly radicalized.

Repeated calls for Western countries to repatriate their nationals have largely fallen on deaf ears.