The forgotten 100

There is no clear count of the TT women and children who have been living in camps in Syria over the last five years.

In July 2023, Repatriation Committee chairman Nizam Mohammed estimated the number at 100; 70 per cent are believed to be children.

Human Rights Watch representatives supported the claim of 100 TT citizens in Syrian camps in 2023, but claimed records of an additional 100 children who were repatriated to other countries successfully.

The Repatriation Committee has been working since 2017 to identify and assist citizens living in Syrian camps.

Most are the wives and children of radicalised men who took their families to the country only to leave widows and orphans when they were killed.

The committee has been at pains to clarify that its work is humanitarian and does not support the import of radicalised citizens to TT.

The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in the Hague has worked on repatriation projects for the children of European parents who are in Syrian camps and found that radicalised women are in a minority. The children born or raised in these camps were too young to be used as child soldiers by the Isis caliphate.

Between 2022 and 2023, the US Department of State has negotiated the repatriation of 7,000 families associated with terrorist fighters. It is concerned that as children age in the camps, they are vulnerable to recruitment by Isis factions.

Under international human rights law, the right to return is assessed not only on the willingness to be repatriated but also on the conditions in which the returning citizen will be situated. Those laws also frown on the separation of a mother and child in the process.

In 2014, a Chaguanas woman and her two stepdaughters walked out of Syria into Turkiye, where the TT government collected them. In all, two women and six children have returned from Syrian camps.

In 2018, the government formed a multi-disciplinary, multi-agency team to address this nuanced process.

Six years later, the Prime Minister told the House of Representatives in January that the government has not repatriated any TT nationals in conflict zones.

In March, the Opposition Leader promised to bring home nationals in Syria and Iraq. Chaguanas West MP Dinesh Rambally announced a plan to visit Syria to kick-start the process.

In April, a Refugee Bill was announced to lubricate the grindingly slow process. It has not been passed into law.

With the overthrow of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad by a rebel faction led by a former al-Qaeda commander concerns about the camps have again been raised.

Will the US or Syria push to close the camps entirely and forcibly repatriate their inhabitants to their home countries?

TT is demonstrably not ready for that prospect.