“Two Swiss girls from ISIS families were handed over to a delegation from Swiss Foreign Affairs Ministry,” the co-chair of Rojava’s foreign relations commission Abdulkarim Omar said in a tweet.
Omar did not disclose which camp they were taken from.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) arrested thousands of ISIS fighters along with their wives and children when they took control of the group’s last stronghold in Syria in March 2019. Most of these people are held at al-Hol and Roj camps.
Kurdish and US officials have made repeated calls on the international community to repatriate their nationals from the camps, where children are exposed to ISIS ideology, but only a few countries have responded positively. Most are worried about security concerns and are generally limiting repatriations, even for children.
Amnesty International renewed its repatriation calls in a recent report, saying children held in al-Hol camp “have been arbitrarily deprived of their liberty and exposed to life-threatening and inhumane conditions.”
“Tens of thousands of children from Syria, Iraq and over 60 other countries, have been abandoned to misery, trauma, and death simply because their governments are refusing to assume their responsibilities and bring these children back to a safe and secure environment,” the report quoted Diana Semaan, Amnesty International’s Syria researcher as saying.
A total of 40,000 children from 60 different countries were living in dire conditions in both Roj and al-Hol camps, Save the Children warned in late September.
A Norwegian orphan was handed over to Norway in November, the same month where a group of 194 people from 48 families left al-Hol camp.
