More than 73,000 people are currently living in the Al-Hol camp in Northern Syria, most of whom are women and children facing “squalid and hazardous conditions” that claimed hundreds of lives, the Council of Europe Commissioner (CoE) for Human Rights said, urging CoE member countries to repatriate their citizens stranded in the camp.
Dunja Mijatovic cited World Health Organisation (WHO) data saying that those in the overcrowded camp have nearly no access to health care andthat essential service providers are overwhelmed. She warned that the conditions will likely worsen with the rising of temperatures.
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“As of 14 March 2019, 120 deaths had been recorded, 80 per cent of them being children under the age of five. In only one month, the total number of deaths doubled, rising 249 as of 11 April. Most fatalities were due to malnutrition, infected wounds, severe burns and acute diarrhoea,” Mijatovic wrote.
She urged CoE member states to “take all necessary measures to ensure the repatriation as a matter of urgency of their under-age nationals from the camp of Al-Hol.”
“One of the primary responsibility of Council of Europe member states is to take all feasible measures to ensure that children affected by armed conflict receive protection and care as provided for in the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocol I, as well as in the 2000 Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, to which all Council of Europe member states are party,” Mijatovic wrote in her statement, adding that those children should foremost be treated as victims.
CoE member states should also consider repatriating the mothers of those children as is stated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, she wrote, insisting that this “does not prevent these States from bringing the mothers to justice where appropriate, in accordance with their legislation and international and European applicable standards.”
Mijatovic mentioned that some CoE members have already taken steps to repatriate their under-age nationals and called on those which have not to “follow suit.”
“I further invite Council of Europe member states to provide adequate medical, psychological and social support to these children upon their return to their home country;” she concluded.
