Children are often the victims of the YPG/PKK terrorist group, which holds swathes of land in war-torn Syria’s northeast. They are either killed in their attacks or recruited into the group. A new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) shows the group’s brutal methods also threaten thousands of children, held in detention solely for their families’ links to Daesh, another terrorist group.

Though Daesh significantly lost clout in Syria, their remnants, mostly women married to Daesh members and their children, were rounded up by YPG/PKK and sent to detention camps. The report by Jo Becker and Letta Tayler of HRW, published on Global Justice Journal's website, says neither the children nor the adults detained in northeast Syria have been brought before a judicial authority and their detention is "arbitrary and unlawful." It says, "Detention based solely on family ties is a form of collective punishment, which is a war crime. Governments that knowingly and significantly contribute to this abusive confinement may be complicit in foreigners’ unlawful detention."

Daesh attracted a large number of "foreign fighters" from around the world when it emerged in Syria and Iraq. Türkiye’s efforts helped thwart the flow of potential recruits while operations including those backed by Türkiye, wiped out the terrorist group’s presence in Syria’s north. In 2019, it lost its last bastion in the region.

The YPG/PKK which seized much of northern and eastern Syria from Daesh with the aid of the United States (which, ironically, recognizes PKK as a terrorist group) set up camps for their prisoners, only to face criticism from the United Nations which deplored the inhumane and degrading conditions at camps.

The HRW report says nearly 80% of the children held in detention camps are under the age of 12, "far too young to have played an active role (in Daesh), yet many governments refuse to take these young nationals back, citing national security concerns or fearing public backlash."

The report, based on visits to al-Hol and Roj camps and other detention centers in northeast Syria since 2019, said conditions for the children are "life-threatening, deeply degrading, and in many cases, inhuman; their cumulative psychological impact may amount to torture." It says medical care, clean water and shelter, as well as education and recreation for those young captives are "grossly inadequate." Even a YPG/PKK affiliated group acknowledged that at least 371 children died in 2019 in al-Hol and many from preventable diseases or hypothermia. Children have also drowned in sewage pits, died in tent fires and have been hit and killed by water trucks, the HRW report said.

HRW said conditions are worse in the prisons and makeshift detention centers where the YPG/PKK holds up to 1,000 detainees from about 20 countries. Most are boys between the ages and 14 and 17. "In the prisons, overcrowding initially was so severe that many of the detainees slept shoulder to shoulder," it noted. Several detainees were transferred to a new prison compound after an earlier attempt by Daesh to break detainees free, but sources quoted in HRW report said hundreds of detainees had tuberculosis that was untreated for months and that several needed specialized surgery or advanced treatment for wounds or other medical conditions. In Houry, where "so-called rehabilitation centers" are located according to the report, HRW said it observed that the boys held there were mostly sitting with vacant stares or walking restlessly around the courtyard during visits in 2019 and 2022.

Boys are separated from their mothers and other siblings in the camps. Quoting a Trinidadian mother in Roj camp, the report said an unnamed mother had not seen her two sons, aged 14 and 15, for nearly four years after they were taken away to somewhere else. It added that foreign boys living with their mothers and siblings are mostly taken to "rehabilitation centers" when they approach or reach adolescence, and those taken include boys as young as 10 and 12, the report added. Quoted in the report, Fionnuala Ni Aolain, the United Nations special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, said "the de facto culling, separation and warehousing of adolescent boys from their mothers is an abhorrent practice inconsistent with the dignity of the child and inconsistent with the most essential rights any child is entitled to in any circumstance."

The plight of children appears far from over, in the meantime. The HRW said that since 2019, approximately 36 countries accepted the return of approximately 6,600 citizens and of these, about 4,450 are children. The report highlights that repatriations increased in 2022 but are still lagging. A Save The Children report says it would take up to three decades to repatriate more than 23,000 children still held in Syria, at current rates.

The HRW report highlights binding United Nations Security Council resolutions, including Resolution 2396 that call on all U.N. member states to prosecute those who have committed Daesh-related crimes and notes that it was impossible at present in the Syrian region controlled by YPG/PKK.

It also warns that "governments that continue to outsource responsibility for their underage nationals to non-state actors inside northeast Syria, a theater of armed conflict, may enable (Daesh) efforts to recruit these children. In the process, the children’s countries of origin are revictimizing children who have already endured unimaginable horrors, first at the hands of (Daesh) and then in detention in squalid and locked tent cities, so-called rehabilitation centers that offer no meaningful rehabilitation and military prisons."