Fionnuala Ni Aolain, UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while fighting terrorism, was the first independent rights expert to gain access to the dirty facilities Al Hol and Al Raj, as well as other detention facilities.
After his six-day visit to the northeast of Syria, Ms. Ni Aolain said that the conditions in the two camps consist of arbitrary and indefinite mass detention with no prospect of legal or judicial process for those held.
Reliable witness
“I witnessed it myself, including mass arbitrary detention of children, incommunicado detention, disappearance, structural and systemic discrimination for the detained person based on their nationality,” he told reporters.
The rights expert, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in June 2017, said he also witnessed the systematic practice of boys being separated from their mothers in the camps – “usually at midnight or in the marketplace”.
She added: “Every single woman I spoke to explained that having their children taken away caused the most anxiety, the most suffering, the most psychological damage.”
The policy is based on an unproven security risk that boys are said to present when they become teenagers.
afraid to ‘feel’
“The fear of boys under 10 (being taken) was palpable,” he recalled, after meeting many traumatized boys and their mothers.
Speaking in Geneva, the rights expert expressed alarm that violence and deep insecurity pervade the detention centers – where some 56,000 suspected extremists and families of alleged ISIL fighters are reportedly held.
Eight out of 10 are under 12, including “a two-year-old child who now lives in this facility, who has not returned home and has lived in a situation of mass, arbitrary detention for the rest of his life”, he said.
Ms. also repeated. Ní Aoláin concerns about the practices of incommunicado detention and disappearance, including against children in the prison of Gweiran Sina’a / Panorama, as well as a confirmed epidemic of tuberculosis, which worsens the health crisis in the facility.
The main concern of Ms. Ní Aoláin is the mass and indefinite detention of children constitutes a “complete violation of international law in what appears to be a endless cradle to grave cycle of detention“.
Rare access
Visiting the detention areas of Qamishli, Gweiran, Al Hol and Al-Malikiyah, Ms. Ni Aolain insisted that meaningful access to places of detention is essential to ensure that serious human rights violations can be identified, reported and prevented – including in high-security areas.
The rights expert also raised concerns about the complete lack of access and management of the so-called “Annex” in Al Hol, where he reported seeing women who were visibly ill. The facility is home to thousands of third-country nationals held for alleged security reasons.
“We cannot keep 10,000 people in a box where no one can see what happens to them and their childrenit is fundamentally unacceptable to any extent a civilized and humane treatment of people in conditions of detention,” he said.
Repatriation plea
The UN Special Rapporteur appealed to the 57 countries whose nationals are detained in northeast Syria to fulfill their basic human rights obligations by repatriating their nationals.
So far, 36 countries have repatriated third countries to Syria since 2019, but at current rates, it will take at least 20 years before all detainees are returned home.
Given that 77 percent of those repatriated are women and children, the rights expert noted that most countries do not return adult men – adding to further concerns of separation.
Going home is important
Returning home is important for all those still held in northeast Syria, Ms. Nor Aolain continues, because they are denied “the basic capacity to live a dignified life in detention, including access to water, food and health care… All these things undermine the right to life and make the return to the countries of nationality absolutely necessary.”
Warning about the possible future effects of inaction, Ms. Ni Aolain said that “anyone who thinks about the long-term security of this region – you close your eyes to the long-term security implications of preventing children in these conditions.”
Special Rapporteurs and other rights experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, work on a voluntary and unpaid basis, are not UN staff, and work independently from any government or organization.