GENEVA: UN rights experts urged 57 states on Monday to repatriate nearly 10,000 of their citizens — women and children associated with fighters of the militant Islamic State group — held in camps in northeast Syria in “sub-human” conditions without legal process.

Under international law, these states have a duty to repatriate their citizens and, if there is evidence, to prosecute adults for war crimes or other offences at fair trials in their domestic courts, the experts said.

Some 9,462 foreign women and children are among more than 64,600 people detained at al-Hol and Roj camps, run by Syrian Kurdish authorities, where the majority of residents are Iraqi and Syrian nationals.

“The matter is one of extreme urgency,” Fionnuala N Aolin, UN special rapporteur on protecting human rights while countering terrorism, told a news briefing after the independent experts issued a joint statement.

She said she had conveyed her demands in detailed letters to every concerned country, including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United States.

“These women and children are living in what can only be described as horrific and sub-human conditions... The conditions in these camps may reach the threshold of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law,” N Aolin said.

Some women had been “groomed online” as brides of Islamic State fighters, while children “had no say in what brought them there”, she said.

The United Nations said last month it had received reports of 12 Syrian and Iraqi nationals being murdered in the first half of January at al-Hol camp, which holds internal refugees and families of IS fighters.

Published in Dawn, February 9th, 2021