UN: France violated rights of children in Syria camps

Emmanuel Macron

03 March 2022; MEMO: The UN Child Rights Committee said France has violated the rights of French children by leaving them in Kurdish-held camps with inhuman conditions, a UN watchdog reports.

According to the report, the UN Child Rights Committee ruled that France has the responsibility and power to protect the French children in the Syrian camps against an imminent risk to their lives by taking action to repatriate them.

"The prolonged detention of the child victims in life-threatening conditions also amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment," report added.

The report was published by 18 independent experts monitoring the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, after they issued the research on three cases involving 49 French children held in Kurdish-controlled camps in Syria's north-east.

During 2014-2016, relatives of suspected people in Syria, including children, were kept in a number of camps in the region, the largest of which is Al-Hol with around 56,000 displaced people and refugees, according to United Nations.