MEAC Evidence and Learning Workshop, Panel 9: The Reintegration Journey of ISIL Affiliates

all right so I've got the great honor to share this super interesting panel which is titled the reintegration journalists of individuals with perceived isil affiliation evidence from the Iraq case study my name is Kovach and I'm with the falcubanidot academy or FBA for short in Sweden the Swedish government agency for peace security and development and FBA has been a sort of proud supporter of me at sort of the outset of this I'm also a little bit double-hearted so I'll mention it because I'm also Affiliated to uppsala University as an Associated professor in peace and conflict research and I thought I'd open with saying something about a report that returned in this very week from a project that we have been involved in in the last seven years a big International research project which we looked at sort of underwatch conditions can you resolve what we called islamist armed conflicts and this sort of whole question came out of a trend that we saw in the conflict data at uppsala University that you might have seen that we had this sort of increase of armed conflicts where you had actors within them the sort of self-defined as having an ideology based on political Islam so the sort of the the way that they framed the conflict and I'm not saying that was all what the conflict was about or what all the actors was about the dynamic but there were actors within it and we saw that this made a difference in terms of patterns and trends of How likely they were to be resolved so as Not only was the kind of an absolute increase in these types of conflicts after 2014 in particular but there was also so that other conflicts were kind of going down so other conflicts were being resolved in different ways or terminated whereas these conflicts were kind of lingering in sort of proportionally becoming then the great bulk of armed conflict so today they constitute about half of their own conflicts going on and about 70 percent of those that are most violent so our question where we sort of started out was to say what is that what's going on with this what's the case what's the different Dynamic how can we possibly explain this and everyone did we did quantitative study and qualitative studies and digging into some some deep cases including actually in Nigeria and in Iraq but also many other cases and two of the things that sort of came out and I'm now simplifying long projects I hope that I'm glad that none of my project participants are here I'm sure they will protest but I think two that I think is interesting one had to do with sort of this the transnational dimension of these conflicts so what that does to the conflict and we clearly also see this over time so where the conflict logic perhaps was quite localized or like nationalized to begin with but when the conflict became interlinked or intertangled with a transnational Dynamic we saw that the possibilities for sort of de-escalation or for de-linking this or finding peaceful way of resolving this conflict became much more complicated really speaking to the prevention that we talked about yesterday um before that happened the other thing that sort of came out had to do with what it does with the reaction from the side of the government and the kind of tools available to the government the support available to the government in terms of its allies in terms of the the counter-insurgency tactics the counter-terrorism Frameworks and how that sort of impacted the way that this conflict was perceived making a bit of a link now over to this panel and what it did to the kind of conflict Dynamics and those are the two of the most interesting things that came out of it and in terms of we did lots of studies looking at are the differences between these non-state armed groups depending on that ideology and most of that came out it's pretty much similar to other armed groups that we know in terms of how they behave in terms of how they act in terms of negotiation attempts and many other things so it was rather sort of what happens and how's the reaction to these types of conflicts including in our International approaches so with that I'm opening up to this interesting uh panel that we have in front of us I'm also going to go and and sit down um hold on I'm just gonna find so who's going to get started it's I'll be following the list in the action program okay I'm gonna go and sit down first okay I apologize from the way I pronounced it too it's been part of the Mia team yep yes correct okay perfect please go ahead yeah good afternoon uh my presentation would be precisely about the factors that affect the affect the return and reintegration process for the families with perceived isil affiliation over the past 18 months project conducted many research on this and today I will share six factors that affect the return and integration process and then I will consider both families those who never left Iraq and those who displaced to Syria and become a residents in al-hulkan for a while the six factors are perceived proximity to isil the flow of information social networks conditions in jadawan and access to livelihood there is one very important factor that is not listed here with the there is one important factor that is not listed here which is a community acceptance the way the two we Street a factor however this would be addressed by my colleague melissan next awesome thank you I perceived proximity to ISO and not all families face the same challenges when they make a decision to to return from Syria to jadawan come to Iraq and to their area of origin we found that some families uh who are seen as particularly close to isil face a bigger challenge than others and to identify those families we put together a set of indicators that were more likely to mean the person was perceived as close to isil this indicators included if a relative of or a family member sentenced or detained for terrorism or if they had to disavow a family member or a relative accused for isil affiliation people who viewed as close to isil were faced the bigger challenge to return our integration for example 22 percent of uh these people who were seen as close to isil uh had children with expired documentation comparing to only four percent uh for for the rest of the population uh also they were more likely to experience discrimination in the community and they were more likely to say they are always excluded from social gatherings a flow of information we look at how people access and use information in order to return from Syria to Iraq and Camp then return to their area of origin we found that most of the people rely on informal sources of information like information from a friend or information Source information from a family member uh this means that people with weak social networks to Iraq find it very difficult to return or get information about the the situation in the return area so they are in a high significant significant disadvantage they usually have nobody to connect them with like tribal leaders or security actors in the area or any uh Community leaders to facilitate the return on the other hand the people with strong social networks had a wider range of information sources and they were better equipped to make their decision to to return a female heads of households were disadvantaged twice because they typically had a wicked social ties also they faced the social norms that prevented them when they try to approach a male information brokers uh another Finding about the flow of information uh is that Al Hulu returns were more likely trust the authorities who treated them with respect and dignity there are also gaps and shortcomings from information sources that sometimes encouraged rumors to to emerge for example when a returnee got arrested during his return and usually the case is not addressed by the Iraqi local authorities which the the other residents in the Jedi one can had to rely on their own unverified source of information to interpret again the case and know if the risk applying to them or not but also there were some good practices in terms of flow of information for example there is a visitor center in jadawan Camp that helps the residents to meet the people they know their family members their relatives also the government provided the right for the residents to use mobile phones in a unrestricted way uh social networks another good Factor about that affect the return and reintegration we found that people who were seen as close to isil had weaker social social connections uh comparing to others 28 percent of them had nobody to ask for a loan in a emergency situation uh also the issue of social networks was especially important for the AL hula returns who are in al-jeda Camp we surveyed some 223 people and we found that the long-term residents had weaker social networks than former residents because they had nobody to receive information about the situation in in a return area also they faced very difficulties to find somebody who can't provide them to support them with sponsorship to in order to to return okay another important finding about the social networks was families with perceived isil affiliations sometimes struggle to establish even the social networks when they return in return areas this is because of the fear of Revenge and field of discrimination in the return area that made them to get themselves isolated from the community and limited limit their movements as as much as possible conditions in jadawan Camp our conditions in jadawan Camp especially the security environment is very uh important factor that affects the integration and return we talked with the people in jadawan Camp they were talking about the difficult times they had in in al-hulk Camp and the security environment is very different comparing to to al-hulkamp in jadawan and also we talked about we talked with service providers in jadawan Camp they provide information about the change in behaviors between the new arrivals in jalawan Camp and the people who arrived before few months usually uh this this behaviors uh comes over the time for the for the residents in in jadawan Camp it's not like ideological shift but it's a change in habits due to the security uh due to the to the security environment for example the the former or the the long-term uh sorry for the long term residence not carrying any stones or any sharp tools to for self-defense comparing to the uh to the new arrivals in in jadawan Camp guys sorry I'm going very quick just about the time uh other factors structural barriers like lack of accommodation lack of livelihoods and lack of civil documentation lack of civil documentation is the most important factor that affects the reintegration and uh sorry that affects the reintegration are returned over 50 percent of jedawan Camp said they still haven't returned in the camp and they haven't returned it because lack of documentation and they know the stories of the people who returned without without renewing civil documentation they first they faced very difficult times in return areas and they couldn't able to renew their civil documentation in return areas without civil documentation people cannot go outside of their immediate areas for work and children cannot go to school which by the end would be a difficult uh like conditions for for integration last Factor is the access to livelihoods I just want to focus on the the impact of uh climate change and environment uh that is very related to the climate change since many returns are going back to the areas that already affected by drought this is important factor because also it's a risk factor that make people to be vulnerable for future recruitment into armed groups we interviewed over 2 000 people over throughout many research and we asked people if they know anyone or the health of anyone who joined an armed group due to the change in weather this question was part of the a group of questions related to the loss of livelihoods as you see like there is 29 percent of people said yes in Italian that people joined in our anarchment group for due to the change in weather however we didn't ask which element group this could be I sell or pmf or any other element group but we know that isil has exploited the change in weather and climate change prior to the 2014 and was able to recruit many people in the areas that are affected by drought and I will stop here thank you very much very much very interesting I think directly made some comparison between the cases but in a way you kind of see some things that come through in many cases I think it's sort of interesting some of the similarities and one thing that I I just wanted to highlight that come came out in your presentation now yourself but even more perhaps in the Publications that come out of this if you read it is this notion of uh behavioral change not so much this sort of ideological change or change of sort of attitude changes in behavior and how much that matter for the different outcomes I think that's a really interesting finding that sort of I would be interested to hear also how that plays out in other contexts thank you very much for this and then we have also from the Mia project welcome up again um doctor now right I shouldn't yes please doctor go ahead thank you um yes so I already already spoke in the morning um so with iom first and then with miyak again I've had the opportunity to look at obstacles to uh to return and reintegration face by families with a proceeded affiliation and again by this I mean first degree relatives of Isis members so father exposes children and brothers against whom there is no prosecution and again because the focus for international organizations at the moment is on the two camps Jeddah and al-hal are focus on on Judah and uh so here is a survey that was conducted by miac with 253 residents of of jedawan Camp showing the main reasons why people had not returned yet to their area of origin so obviously the first Factor the most important information here is that all of them I mean most of them need a civil documentation and they were vaguely hoping to receive help from International Organization before leaving the camp and being on their own um so I already discussed this in the morning many families were also waiting for relatives to be allowed to leave alcohol camp and be repatriated to uh to a jedacamp and also the process to obtain securely securely clearance can take a little bit of time so these are two immediate factors that can delay departure from the camp but it actually says nothing of the of the the actual obstacles faced by people in the communities once they leave the camp um whether they go back to their area of origin or if they resettle uh in a new location and most people I mean a lot of people I spoke to in jedawan Camp they told me that they would go to a different place um for reasons outlined here for example because their house was destroyed or taken but also and I hear I sing the line um don't I face Community threats and rejection is actually as important as a factor and it should actually come second I think and here the discrepancy comes I think from the the methodology that's used to conduct surveys where people don't necessarily open up unless you have them trust you first um and um that can take a little bit of time but really more than half of the people I spoke to they told me that they had fears of threats or issues of fears of false or exaggerated accusation uh locally in the in their area of origin and that brings us to community receptivity um obviously there exists a broad spectrum [Music] from complete rejection to relative acceptance of their return and it really depends on the number of factors in areas um so the sectarian makeup of the the of the the area of origin is important in areas with a mixed population of sunnis and shias return is usually more complicated this is really the case in the lafar and in yasarib where I conducted research in 2021 and Intel lafar trust me the situation should really be described as a silent ongoing ethnic ethnic cleansing I don't have time to give you the details but if you're interested you can reach out I wrote reports on this with a lot of details um then also you have a number these are kind of isolated uh cases but still there are a number of uh zones or regions that are still completely closed blocked by armed groups uh the popular mobilization forces in particular you have alja near tikrit you have akashat near kaim and which is a this big area it's a 120 000 people mostly from the janabi tribe they cannot return elsewhere in Sunni areas so it really depends on what has happened under Isis if massacres were perpetrated locally and also mostly it depends and here this is almost as important as the Civil documentation issue because it goes completely Under The Radars as well as it depends on whether or not a family was a perceived affiliation has a personal or tribal disputes in their area of origin whether these fears are Justified or imagined and revenge is oftentimes tied to what has happened of course under Al-Qaeda and Isis but very often oftentimes it can stem from more trivial or personal disputes uh land women local power and very often it's very difficult to separate all these factors um so what people do in the community when they are opposed to the return of a family they make false or exaggerated accusations against this family and very often the the houses or the land of an unwanted family have also be taken most often by people who also lost their own houses and who might might have victim relatives as a form of reparation so it makes everything very complex but um so these accusations can be made either by secret informants but this happens a lot less recently so what people do they're smart they use loopholes what they do is that they reach out directly to the counter-terrorism services in Baghdad and this is a huge issue because for publicity reasons funding and politics they are under pressure to rest and convict as many people as possible and what they do is that they do not coordinate with local security actors who usually know more or less what people have done concerts terrorism Services they come at night they make this arrest and then it's extremely difficult to get people out of jail and so two categories are more at risk of this widespread accusations obviously relatives of Isis anyone brothers or sisters it's very easy to say oh he or she also did something but also there's another category that goes completely unnoticed daily wage workers usually these are the poorest people in the community who could not afford playing a Smuggler they stayed under Isis and they worked for Isis without pledging Allegiance for example they transported the water or food the duct tunnels for the wage and um those who don't have personal or tribal issues uh in their Community usually because there is no prosecution against them they have they have come back others live in constant fear and this is typically not something that people will share with you during quantitative surveys they will tell you likely that their house was taken because also they expect some form of help from you and um and that'll end and this is an important Point as well which is that it's more broadly in Sunni areas at least it's very difficult it's it's impossible to talk about clear-cut categories of victims versus perpetrators because most people who have lost relatives as well I mean they have at least cousins but sometimes first degree relatives as well who have some form of affiliation some degree of affiliation to Isis and it really depends on the position of power of these people in the community the way they're being perceived and this was very much the case in alkyne for example where the families that were introduced to me as victim families and they they truly are victim families all of them they had turned out that they had relatives that they were trying to bring back from our home and just unless unlike wealthier people in the community they couldn't afford paying a Smuggler uh two thousand five hundred dollars that's what it costs Hezbollah who's running the business um so if it's a family of 10 they cannot pay um but they were yeah mostly women and children that they were trying to bring back um and that brings us to the last point to the idea that if the lines are so blurred with time at least room for reconciliation also increases and this is something that I have personally noticed um when I started this research in 2020 most people I spoke to they were very much I mean they rejected the idea that families was a perceived affiliation could return at all now people usually they express compassion especially toward women and children whose votes they insist it is not if there are men made the wrong choices and also something that I noticed is so this huge state-led Revenge campaign I mean people making false accusations um not giving them civil documentation punishing all these women and children now people in the community who at first were saying no kill them we don't want them back don't let them come back from Syria now they're telling me this is this is a disaster the way these people are being women and children are being punished this is going to backlash so bad in the future so the community is aware that this huge campaign Revenge campaign that's happening is going to is going to backlash I mean they are going to pay um I mean for what's happening right thank you very much thank you I mean really I mean what I really like about this presentation specifically but also many other presentations is this when you go out and really look at this in this sort of empirical details what you know it really sort of matches what you call it or what you label it and it's so intertwined with so many other things I recognize it a lot from the work that I've been doing on electoral violence for example that sort of first of all it becomes involved with local issues and revenge issues and family ties and what we call electoral violence might be some other form of land dispute that sort of becomes interlinked with that sort of electrodynamic and I think it's very true in these sort of circumstances too and understanding that context is super important I think we now have a video message I would say from Miss Alexander Lucas a senior protection protection advisor Northeast Syria save the children and good morning colleagues my name is Alexandra and I'm a child protection advisor currently working in Northeast Syria while I'm disappointed I wasn't able to join you all in person for the conference it's my pleasure to be able to contribute to this very interesting and pressing discussion on the reintegration journeys of individuals with perceived isil affiliation working in the camps here in Nez I'll provide a brief overview of what day-to-day life in detention camps like owl Hall and Raj looks like so to start I'd like to mention some of the hardships that those living in a whole andraj face conditions are alarming with very limited access to basic needs such as fresh and nutritious food water points and Medical Services wash facilities are in many cases dilapidated with very little privacy poor lighting and are generally not gender segregated families live in tents which provide very little protection from the elements where temperatures in the winter drop below freezing and intense sandstorms in the summer are common families are restricted in movement including a schedule of when they can go to the market education for children is also limited and largely only primary education is provided and mostly by non-government organizations protection concerns are numerous including the general lack of privacy physical and gender-based violence between residents as well as from law enforcement mechanisms such as the acai Security Forces High numbers of aggressive dogs and lack of access to basic services and specialized supports for children there are very few spaces for them to play and participate in normal activities that a child should there are developmental delays due to the limited access to education and lack of social lack of supportive social environments young boys perceived to be over 12 are often arbitrarily removed from their mothers and sent to detention centers which are more like prisons where they live with no contact with their families there are many indicators that extremist isil ideology continues within the camps particularly in the al-ho annexes and Raj extension where Third Country Nationals are detained these include a simple Persistence of very conservative practices such as women wearing full kneecap separation of boys and girls and restriction on certain activities seen as Haram more formally these include al-hisbah committees which have been appointed to oversee and monitor Community morals and values in line with Sharia law and are responsible to report on anyone seen in conflict with these there are even reports that ad hoc Sharia courts have been set up where those in conflict with Sharia law are tried and punished accordingly religion classes are popular in the camps where leaders continue to radicalize and re-radicalize uh residents including children of all ages so as I touched on previously violence continues to be a real threat in all Hall and Raj camps both among residents and from authorities adults continue to act and encourage their children to act in violent and aggressive ways towards Outsiders throwing stones at organization vehicles and staff encouraging dog attacks and acting out in class and safe space settings this cycle of violence is very difficult to break especially when residents are in an environment that perpetuates it and promotes fear fear is in fact pervasive in the lives of residents in al-hole and Raj camps fear of the unknown of what will become of their lives fear of the very real threats they face on a daily basis fear of what may await them in their home countries for those who are Third Country Nationals but also fear among Outsiders the International Community decision makers security actors and the public for what affects reintegration of individuals with perceived isil affiliations may have thus it is crucial that we look at how to break this cycle of violence and fear at where the responsibility lies for solutions to this very real and troubling challenge and at how we can uphold human rights accountability while balancing security concerns so I'll end here by thanking you for allowing me to contribute to this discussion I look forward to hearing about the outcomes and actions for this Con from the conference and yeah thank you so much all right is think we kind of thank her even though she can't hear us thinking that but thank you very much for that so we go to the next speaker on this Dr Ann sharbor a senior legal advisor Office of the UN special reporter on the protection and promotion of Human Rights while countering terrorism thank you and let me start by thanking you siobhone and the whole meac team for inviting the Mandate of the special reporter to this meeting so I've been asked to address briefly the situation of those who can't leave Northeast Syria and touch upon the broader humanitarian and security implications of the inability to return so a lot of what I will say I think will be complementary to what we just heard from Alexandra and obviously I approached the issues from the work that the Mandate has done in Northeast Syria but also from the perspective of the Mandate which addresses situations that have been placed in the terrorism box and hopefully at the end you might see why why I put this um up front um so I'm going to start by saying a few words about the humanitarian human rights and security situation in Northeast Syria broadly which is very different from many of the situations that we have been discussing um over the last three days and first some figures um which many of you know there are still about 65 000 individuals detained in Northeast Syria of these approximately 28 000 are Iraqi and fifteen thousand are a Third Country Nationals al-hal and Raj the two largest locked camps hold approximately 55 000 individuals there are seven thirty seven thousand foreign Nationals of which 27 000 are Iraqi and ten thousand are Third Country Nationals from approximately 60 different countries um in these camps the last the large majority of the population that's about 60 percent are children of which 80 or 80 are under the age of 12 and 30 percent are under the age of five in addition there are approximately ten thousand men detained in Northeast Syria um including up to a thousand detainees who were apprehended as boys and who have since crossed the threshold into adulthood of these approximately five thousand are foreigners three thousand from Iraq and two thousand Third Country Nationals there are also 750 boys again approximate numbers that are detained either in prisons or in closed rehabilitation centers so although all these figures are approximative they are extremely high given that these individuals have been detained for four years and that we have just entered the fifth year of detention now from a legal perspective um for the Mandate that I represent today as there is no legal basis for or review of um the blanket indefinite Detention of all of these individuals these are arbitrary detentions that entirely lack in predictability and due process of law um the European Court of human rights as some of you might have heard has determined that the situation in the camps verges on a legal on a legal vacuum that individuals are facing a real and immediate threat to their lives and physical well-being um the UK's special immigration appeals commission noted that the conditions in the camp are so bad that they meet the threshold of inhuman or degrading treatment the UN Committee Against torture has stated that the conditions of detention amount to inhuman and degrading treatment and for the committee on the rights of the child the children in the camps face an immediate risk of death turning now to men and boys um they are held in situations that are indeed arbitrary detention but they're also incommunicado detention and in some cases we should probably be speaking of enforced disappearances and I'm referring here for instance to the case of an Australian teenager called Yahoo sahab whose location or bodily remains have not been revealed to this day one year more than one year after the attack on the prison in hasaka where he disappeared a court in Canada has just assessed that the conditions in the prisons are harsher than those in the camps correctly the court said that they were even more dire than those in the camps they noted the deplorable conditions of detention the overcrowding lack of Health Care and food torture allegations and the fact that men have not been seen or heard from since 2019. access to the prisons is extremely restricted it was already very limited but it's now almost completely gone since the attack last January on hasaka Prison so some repatriations have happened since 2019 we have approximately 36 countries who have accepted the return of about 6500 of their citizens and in recent months the pace of repatriation has significantly stepped up at the same time it's clear that all almost all of the returns that's about 77 percent have been of women and children um according to the figures that we have obtained only 56 Third Country National men have been repatriated to just under 10 countries so it's become very clear that there's a large population that will not be able to repatriate in the short to medium term or that may never be able to repatriate and it's also clear that a number of states are preparing for Long Detention periods given that the current makeshift um that Alexandra has just described is being turned into modern high security bricks and mortar detention is becoming more entrenched and it's carried out at the behest of states of nationality so the people who won't be able to return um include a broad range of individuals some who will not want to return home some who have been rendered stateless through the arbitrary deprivation of their citizenship some who were born stateless because they can't prove their parents citizenship many who can't return due to normal concerns and some who simply have been assessed is not apt to return or not chosen for repatriation or not yet chosen for repatriations for reasons that they themselves simply don't know and it also includes a number of men and boys who are simply not part of the repatriation rehabilitation reintegration trilogy as well as an increasing number of boys and Alexandra referred to this who have aged out of the repatriation circuit after having reached the age of 12 and who have been taken out of the camps and being put in these rehabilitation centers or these prisons proving that boys in this conflict context um are seen as threats upon reaching adolescence they are not seen as victims they are seen as threats so it's clear that alternatives to repatriation are needed and on this I'll just make two points I don't have a magic solution to the situation in Northeast area but just two points first that the complexities of the political and the humanitarian landscape in Northeast Syria does not allow for easy solutions or quick fixes finding durable Solutions will be a long-haul process for which the sequenced approach is going to be necessary this will certainly include local integration as well as potential resettlement to third countries but it's pretty clear that this option will be very difficult to implement given already the difficulties in obtaining the repatriation of their countries accepting the repatriation of their own Nationals so as part of the sequenced approach there's a need to find human rights compliance solutions for the most vulnerable population and this of course includes children but for this more transparency is needed we need to be able to identify and better understand the profiles of those who are not going to be able to return or not going to be able to return immediately and this is a real challenge because there's very limited access to the camps and almost inexistent access to the prisons and there's a lack of transparency of both states of nationality and of the de facto authorities in Northeast area um the second point I want to make on this is that humanitarian action cannot be a substitute to political Solutions political will um and the involvement of states that carry political weight is going to be critical and I'm just going to finish on the question of assessment of threat and I've been very pleased to hear over the past three days um that the importance of evidence as part of this project because in the field of terrorism and violent extremism this remains a key Gap um the mass arbitrary detention in this region is Justified on the basis that it is a security imperative it's the perceived or actual association with isil makes return resettlement or letting people go too risky but let's be clear apart from security assessments that have been carried out by some security agencies from a few countries there remains very little knowledge about who the individuals who are detained in the camps and in the prisons are and what they may have done in just one recent case from the UK and this is the case of shimaima begum that I'm sure you've all heard about shows that an interview given to a newspaper from the camps led a young woman to be vilified by public opinion stripped stripped of her citizenship she's likely stateless at the moment while in fact she had been groomed as a child as the special immigration appeal commission recognized in a very recent case and that it is likely that she was trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation by isil so it's not good enough to rely on words like screaming and screening and assessment of populations because they often carry a security or counter-terrorism meaning which is different from the one that is intended by human rights and humanitarian organizations when unproven exhortations to an unspecified threat of terrorism caused by certain categories of individuals are clearly overly simplistic they they don't contribute to addressing the terror terrorism or complex violence um and if we fail to assess the security implications of long-term arbitrary detention and other human rights violations were missing a fundamental dimension of the real and tangible security threat that follows from the maintenance of alcohol Raj and other detention places in Northeast Syria so for those of you who are familiar with the work of the Mandate my conclusion is not going to come as a surprise in Northeast Syria many of the Frameworks that should apply human rights law the absolute prohibition of torture the right to life the right to education many others the right not to be rendered stateless the law applicable to Children the Frameworks relating to the Recruitment and the use of children by non-stage armed groups the Frameworks applicable to human trafficking are being completely displaced to address a threat on the threat of terrorism and given the risks linked to sustained human rights violation the geopolitical fluidity of the region and the presence of designated groups whether this is effective in countering terrorism or indeed building peace should give us all pause for thought I'll stop here thank you thank you very much for that important reminder which also directly relates to many of the countries above us that are sitting in this room and although it is a very specific circumstances you talk about there are elements of that particular discussion that I think relates to many of the other contexts that in which we are have talked about also um so with that unfortunately Juanita couldn't join us so we have gladly um Abdul Maine Mustafa has volunteered to be the discussant he will also lead one of the workshops that will follow directly after so we're glad to give some remarks please go ahead thank you very much Devon for having us here and for unidir and I'm Kevin for unit our colleague from UNICEF Iraq um thank you for for panelists for for the the notes that you make um we are when we talk about Isis families we're dealing with with a specific group not the ones that we've been talking about during the last three days not we're not talking about Fighters with with guns we're talking about families that are just happen to be Sons or wives or or Daughters of of a fighter the real Fighters perpetrators either are killed or in jail or they fled the country that's that's what what make the the condition very very very difficult this also lead to what Victoria has mentioned in her presentation how do we deal with them as a security threat or from humanitarian human rights point of view and I think this is also has a this this issue has created even a problem within governments like Iraq when they decided to bring those people back you have the security forces and the pushing for them to to to be prosecuted and you have the minister of immigration they're pushing for them to be part of the the normal IDP caseload and that has also led to some problems that delay some of the return to to Iraq recently um on the other side is what about the victims you know we've been talking about isil families and and returning them back but victims has has has a say on that and and I remember in one of the activities that we do we work to identify some of the beneficiaries uh one person came and he said can you count me as a as an isilda at some point it's it's it's it's it's not good to label yourself you are from isil because that carries a lot of things but because of the a lot of attention that we have put on on isil families as International Community so that's that's something also need to be to be addressed um another thing that came in the discussion is the community acceptance and a big junk of that it has to do with uh addressing the Grievances of those families um addressing their concerns on rehabilitation one main condition that has come up in all the meetings that we have with communities is we can accept those people provided that one they get rehabilitated what type of Rehabilitation drama yesterday has spoken about be asking about psychological Rehabilitation but it's that it's just something that we can do so something that it can it can bring some some results uh the other aspect is compensation in Iraq law they have a compensation law that's by which those who have subject being subject to to terrorist attacks they get individual sort of compensation but that hasn't moved forward for many reasons committees are not enough judges are not enough in those committees that delays in the processes so part of it is also to to to to to move those kind of of uh files like compensation for people to to to to accept isil families back in their in their communities one final thing we're talking about the former return now although the statistics that and the resources we have done and about former returns that people came from alcohol Syria to jaiwan we know the numbers we take the numbers from the government but there are big numbers that that coming back to Iraq from one Hall informally they're getting there and they're also posing a security threat to people we don't have the the figures we don't know how to reach them most of the time you you use local sources here and there but that's also an area to look at finally I will I will I will ask a question that's going to be discussed in the in the workshop later how we connect what uh Victoria Ann has spoken about the statistics that we heard about in J1 in in a whole with what melisand has spoken about in J in in J1 so there is this Gap and and if you look at the statistics and figures you get different figures I mean if you go to the government to some other source you find different figures than what Victorian has presented here so there's also this uh this uh Gap that we're going to discuss more thank you very much the penalties over to you right thank you very much so join me in thanking the entire panel [Applause]

Channel: UNIDIR — the UN Institute for Disarmament Research

Views: 78

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Id: zFY1br8HEGY

Length: 53min 6sec (3186 seconds)

Published: Wed May 31 2023