Northeast Syria: Arbitrary detention of children needs to stop, says top rights expert
Mass arbitrary and indefinite detentions of children without legal process in northeast Syria need to cease immediately, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Ms. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, said on Friday.
Briefing journalists after returning from a six-day visit to the country, the independent UN-appointed expert said that she had witnessed “mass arbitrary detention of children, incommunicado detention, disappearances, structural and systematic discrimination for detained person on the basis of their nationality…Torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as well as the deprivation of the fundamental capacity to live a dignified life in detention, including access to water, food and health care.”
Ms. Ní Aoláin said that she had been particularly appalled to witness “the mass, indefinite and arbitrary detention of children, particularly boys, in various types of facilities premised on the alleged threat that they pose to security based on their or their parent's alleged prior links with Da'esh…I want to make clear that not a single in many cases legal determination has been made for the vast majority of these children detained, whether they're detained in prisons, camps or centers.”
During her visit, Ms. Ni Aoláin met with Syrian government official and focused on detention and repatriation issues in the northeast.
The UN Special Rapporteur had access to several prisons and detention places, a first for an independent human rights expert. She also visited prisons and sites of detention in Qamishli, Gweirna, Al Hol districts and al-Malikya city.
According to the camp authorities, almost 50,000 people live in the Al Hol camp: 15,000 women, 3,000 men and more than 30,000 children.
Some “31,000 children, mass detention, arbitrary detention of children,” Ms. Ni Aoláin said. “It is, in my view, no doubt that this facility is a detention facility because no one can leave or enter without the permission of the detaining authority."
Conditions in Al Hol camp are dire, despite the efforts of under-funded humanitarian actors. The Special Rapporteur highlighted the major humanitarian challenges experienced by the population, particularly access to water and electricity. She emphasised the broader constrictions on health services affecting both the general population and those held in detention facilities as well as serious concerns about the situation of women in the Annex at Al Hol, given the lack of meaningful access by anyone other than security actors to that location.
“It is entirely unacceptable that we have 40,000 plus people held in a detention facility where 60 per cent of them are children under the age of 12. And we have absolutely no idea what's happening in that facility,” Ms. Ni Aoláin said. “I think to say that this is a breach of international law is perhaps the understatement of the day.“
The top rights expert recognized the intense political and security complexity of the situation on the ground, including the presence of a number of State and non-state actors exercising various forms of control and competences over parts of the population and institutions in this region, as well as the presence of UN Security Council-designated terrorist groups.
The Special Rapporteur observed the systematic practice of separating boys, in particular third country nationals, from their mothers in the camps upon reaching adolescence, causing irreparable harm which would inevitably work against any stated efforts at rehabilitation.
“Anyone seriously thinking about long-term security in this region who is not addressing the systematic and arbitrary detention of thousands of children is closing their eyes to the long-term security implications of what it means to hold children in these kinds of conditions of detention indefinitely.”
Ms. Ni Aoláin added that “they won't sleep at night because the separation is usually happening at night without notice, often violently. And we had consistent reports both from the detaining authorities and the mothers, that mothers are hiding their boys, so they won't be taken.”
Most of the camp inmates are Iraqi, Syrian and third country nationals. The Special Rapporteur appealed to all States whose nationals are detained in northeast Syria to live up to their fundamental human rights obligations and repatriate their nationals. She regretted that she was unable to access the annex in Al Hol where third country nations are detained.
“The other black hole is non-repatriation, which is the non-repatriation of men and the unwillingness to return men and again, as boys age into being men who are separated and kept in facilities”, she said. “What that means is that you're condemning the boy child in this facility to a life of imprisonment on no legal grounds, except for the fact that he was born there. He happens to be a boy and he's deemed to be associated with terrorism by virtue of where he was born and who he was born to.”
The Special Rapporteurs are independent experts and serve in their individual capacity who work on a voluntary basis. They are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work.
-ends-
1
1
1
Edited News | UNWOMEN
Aid agencies echoed wider warnings of growing signs of widespread starvation in Gaza on Tuesday, as UN-partnered international food security experts released their most dire assessment yet of the situation in the wartorn enclave.
1
1
1
Edited News | IOM , UNDP , UNHCR
Sudan: urgent help needed as more than 1.3 million war-displaced people begin to return home
As conflict rages on across parts of Sudan, pockets of relative safety have emerged in the past four month, spurring more than one million internally displaced Sudanese to make their way home, says the International Organization for Migration (IOM). A further 320,000 cross-border refugees have come back to Sudan since last year, mainly from Egypt and South Sudan, to assess the current situation before deciding to return to their country for good.
1
1
1
Edited News | UNRWA , WHO
Gaza: SOS messages describe people fainting from hunger; UN health worker detained
Worrying alerts from United Nations staff in Gaza who have been fainting from hunger and exhaustion over the past 48 hours have increased fears for people’s survival in the devastated enclave, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday.
1
1
1
Edited News | UNHCR , UNOG
Over 11.6 million refugees risk losing aid access due to funding cuts, says UNHCR
Approximately one in three refugees and other vulnerable individuals normally supported by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) are expected to lose out from funding cuts, it said on Friday.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR
Ravina Shamdasani, Spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, made the following announcement on the Office’s opening of a new mission in Bangladesh.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR
“The surge in the number of Afghans forced or compelled to return to Afghanistan this year is creating a multi-layered human rights crisis requiring the urgent attention of the international community,” UN Human Rights spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said on Friday.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR , UNOG
UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk on Friday called for accountability and justice for the killings and other gross human rights violations and abuses in the southern city of Suweida.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR , UNHCR
Syria: hundreds killed in Sweida, ‘widespread’ violations as civilians flee for their lives
Amid violent clashes in southern Syria’s Sweida governorate, a picture of grave human rights abuses and rising humanitarian needs is emerging by the hour, the UN said on Friday.
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR , UNOG
At the bi-weekly press briefing in Geneva the UN Human Rights Spokesperson Liz Throssell made the following statement on the latest number of civilian casualties in Ukraine.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR , UNOG
The UN Human Rights Office on Tuesday called for investigations into hundreds of killings of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank by Israeli security forces and settlers, warning against ongoing forced mass displacement of the Palestinian population.
1
1
2
Edited News | OHCHR , UNRWA
Nearly 900 people have been killed in Gaza in recent weeks trying to fetch food, with most deaths linked to private aid hubs run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Tuesday.
1
1
1
Edited News | OHCHR , UNOG
The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) and the UN Human Rights Office have today released a report detailing the evolution of violent gang incidents beyond the capital Port-au-Prince since October 2024 up to June 2025, and the resulting loss of life and mass displacement.