Repatriation case lodged against government to bring women and children in Syrian camps home

Legal proceedings are being lodged in the federal court on Monday seeking to force the Albanese government to repatriate another 17 children and nine women from Syrian detention camps

Australian women and children at al-Roj camp in northeastern Syria. Picture: Ellen Whinnett/The Australian

A legal case seeking to force the federal government to repatriate 17 children and nine women held for the past four years in a Syrian detention camp for families linked to ISIS will be lodged in the Federal Court on Monday.

Charity group Save the Children Australia is pursuing the case on behalf of the women and children, all Australian citizens or eligible for citizenship, which they say is a “last resort” given the government’s failure to intervene in an increasingly dangerous and traumatic humanitarian situation.

They say the families, locked up since the fall of ISIS in 2019, are becoming more desperate by the day, with the children exposed to violence, receiving limited education and with their physical and mental health deteriorating.

Hopes had been high among the detained families after the government repatriated four women and their 13 children from the camps last October, but that optimism had been sapped in the ensuing months of fruitless negotiations, Save the Children Australia CEO Mat Tinkler said.

“We have worked at length to engage with the government on this issue to prevent it from ever coming to court, but we’re now out of other options,” he said.

“Every day these Australian children are left in Syria is another day their safety and wellbeing are at risk.”

Mr Tinkler said the children, most around 12 years old but some of whom were born there, were “being punished for the alleged actions of their parents.”

“As Australian citizens, they deserve the same opportunities as every other Australian child,” he said.

“They simply want to come home, attend school and most of all, feel safe. The repatriations last October raised the remaining children’s hopes that they too would soon be out of harm’s way. Instead, they feel they have been abandoned by their country and are losing hope for the future.

Save the Children CEO Mat Tinkler visited the camp at al-Roj in Syria in June last year.

The Australian women are the wives and widows of ISIS fighters who were either killed in Syria, or are held in jails in Syria or Iraq. About 41 Australian women and children are in the al-Roj camp, one of a number operating in northeastern Syria. About 55,000 foreign national women and children are in the secure camps.

Eight Australian children were repatriated by the previous government in 2019, and a further 17 women and children last October.

Save the Children is acting on behalf of 26 of the remaining women and children as “litigation guardian”, as they are not in a position to run their own case.

The writ claims that having repatriated others from the camp last year, by not taking steps to repatriate the remaining women and children the government is causing their ongoing unlawful detention.

And the longer they remain in the al-Roj camp the greater the risk of serious harm, death, or cruel and degrading treatment.

Mr Tinkler said he visited the camp last June and had seen some Australian children with untreated shrapnel wounds.

Others had severe dental decay and many were in acute emotional distress.

“It’s one of the worst places in the world to be a child,” he said.

“The weather oscillates between freezing in the winter, with significant risk of hypothermia, to stifling heat that has resulted in the death of children.

“The camps are situated in the Syrian desert, within a functioning oilfield, so there are noxious fumes permeating the tents of the women and children.

“There’s minimal access to education or adequate healthcare, and as a result these children are really just hanging on.”

Mr Tinkler said the case would be bolstered by how the families repatriated to Australia last October were faring. “They are settling back into the Australian way of life well,” he said. “The children are back in school. They’re receiving health care and mental health support for the trauma they have been through.”