Children without identity .. In the footsteps of Tunisia, will Arab and African countries receive their nationals from Libya?

Mahmoud Mohamed - Tripoli

On Thursday, Tunisia received six children of ISIS fighters who were receiving care at the Red Crescent Society in Misurata, with children of Arab and African nationalities.

With this, the number of children who have been extradited to their countries reaches about thirty, while more than twenty children of different nationalities are still awaiting extradition while caring for the Red Crescent in Misurata, in addition to the presence of children from Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan and African countries accompanied by their mothers in the Air College Prison in Misurata.

Tunisian Consul in Libya, Tawfiq Al Qasimi, confirmed that Tunisian President Qais Saeed is personally following the issue of receiving the children of ISIS fighters who are of Tunisian nationality.

"The Tunisian authorities are ready to work with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Al-Wefaq government and the Libyan Attorney General's office to accept the Tunisian mothers and their Tunisian children who are in the Air College Prison in Misrata, if they do not have any terrorist cases with the Libyan judiciary," he added.

Al-Qassimi explained that the Tunisian authorities confirmed in the first stage of the affiliation of mothers and children in the Air College Prison to the Tunisian nationality in coordination with the Libyan authorities.

In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, Al-Qasimi expressed his thanks to the Libyan authorities for their great cooperation and the provision of facilities despite the conditions that Libya is passing in order to close this humanitarian file, praising the role of the "Bunyan Al-Marsous" forces in ending ISIS in Sirte in 2016.

The consul indicated that Tunisia will send a technical team in cooperation with Libya to inspect the bodies recovered during this process to take the necessary tests to prove that these bodies are due to the Tunisian nationality for delivery to their families.

Interesting and caring
The spokesman for Operation Bunyan Al-Marsous, Major General Mohammed Al-Ghassari, confirmed that the Red Crescent Society in Misrata has taken care of the children for the past four years.

A number of children of ISIS fighters live without identification documents in Libya, despite their lineage proving after investigations conducted with ISIS detainees during the Bunyan Al-Marsous operation that destroyed the ISIS stronghold in Libya in 2016.

Some countries oppose the process of restoring the children of ISIS fighters who lost their fathers or mothers in the war against the organization in Libya.

The Libyan Red Crescent in Misurata is working to house children of IS fighters, provide them with health care and provide their daily needs.

The children live in a small headquarters in Misurata, following the Red Crescent, and there is a games hall, a playground, and three large rooms in which they lived since the beginning of handing them about fifty children, the average age of three months to 12 years, but the center currently has a few children.

International agreements
Wissam academic Al-Saghir said that children in the Misrata Red Crescent Center live in an environment closer to the natural environment with their peers, noting that local and international laws obligate the Libyan state to treat children in accordance with international agreements on children's rights and the Bangkok rules for the treatment of prisoners.

Al-Sagheer stressed that the law enforcement authorities in Libya are obligated with the second category of children who accompany their mothers inside penal institutions to remove them from the prison environment after they reach the age of two years to hand them over to their families or to the social welfare home if there are no relatives for them to receive the correct educational formation.

And he adds to Al-Jazeera Net that "the presence of the child inside the prison, whether with or without his mother, does not take into account the interests of the child, which requires his presence outside the prison to receive proper education with the community."

Psychologist Anwar Al-Sadi believes that children at the Red Crescent Center in Misurata have received great attention from local and international organizations that visit them from time to time.

"The prison environment remains an environment that is not fit for life, as children are deprived of education, social interaction, integration into society and movement in every freedom at an important stage of their life," Al-Sadi added to Al-Jazeera Net.