January 20, 2023, Montreal: Canada will repatriate six women and 13 infants detained in northeast Syria in camps for family members of ISIS fighters, Ottawa announced Friday. It is the largest such repatriation of Daesh family members yet in Canada. It comes after the women went to court to force the government to bring them home, saying it was obliged under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
On Friday, the country’s foreign ministry said it had reached a “mutually acceptable resolution” of the case over their application to return. The agreement resolved the case for the 19 Canadian women and children but left four men seeking repatriation as part of the case to be decided on in the coming weeks. “The safety and security of Canadians is our government’s top priority,” said Global Affairs Canada, the foreign ministry.
“We continue to evaluate the provision of extraordinary assistance on a case-by-case basis, including repatriation to Canada, in line with the policy framework adopted in 2021,” it said.
Up until now, the government of Justin Trudeau has treated the detained IS families on a case-by-case basis, and in four years, only a handful of women and children have been repatriated. Since the destruction of the Daesh “caliphate” across Syria and Iraq in 2019, more than 42,400 foreign adults and children with alleged ties to Daesh have been held in camps in Syria, according to Human Rights Watch. Repatriating them is a highly sensitive issue for many countries. Still, rights groups have denounced their reluctance to return their nationals from the camps, controlled mostly by Syrian Kurds. Human Rights Watch said around 30 Canadian citizens, including ten infants, remain in the camps.
Farida Deif, the group’s head in Canada, said that Global Affairs Canada had informed a number of them by letter that they fulfill the requirements for repatriation. However, she said, “none of the men have been notified of anything or have been part of any agreements thus far.” The authorities did not say when the 19 would come to Canada or whether they would face legal proceedings for their association with Daesh. Last October, Canada brought back two women and two children from Syria. In 2020, Ottawa allowed the return of a five-year-old orphan girl from Syria after her uncle initiated legal action against the Canadian government.
