• Last July, 16 mothers and 35 minors, present in jihadist prison camps in Syria, were repatriated to France.

    This was the first repatriation of women with their children.

  • Before this repatriation, the French authorities advocated a “case by case” policy concerning the possible return of women and children of French jihadists captured in Iraq and Syria.

  • The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Wednesday condemned the French state for not having repatriated the families of French jihadists

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After the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, it is the turn of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to point the finger at France.

In question, the Paris doctrine concerning the return from Syria, “on a case-by-case basis”, of the wives of French jihadists.

If France agreed, for the first time last July, to repatriate 16 mothers and 35 minors, its policy remains "arbitrary", estimated the ECHR, this Wednesday, which condemned it.

Why was France condemned?

What will this decision change?

Will Paris have to repatriate all the families of French jihadists?

20 Minutes

takes stock.

Why did the ECHR condemn France?

In 2021, after the refusal of the French authorities to repatriate their daughters, stranded in camps in Syria with their children since 2019, the parents of two young French women seized the ECHR.

They argued that their daughters and grandchildren, detained in the Al-Hol and Roj camps, in the northeast of the country, were exposed to "inhuman and degrading treatment".

Believing this Wednesday that France has violated article 3.2 of protocol 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which stipulates that "no one may be deprived of entering the territory of the State of which he is a national “, the Court therefore asks France to “re-examine as soon as possible” the requests for repatriation.

"It is incumbent on the French government to resume the examination of the applicants' requests as soon as possible by surrounding it with appropriate guarantees against arbitrariness", can be read in the judgment of the ECHR.

Will this decision oblige the State to repatriate them?

This sentence is not necessarily synonymous with automatic repatriation.

According to the ECHR, the wives of jihadists and their children do not benefit from a general right to repatriation under the right to enter the national territory.

On the other hand, in the event of refusal, the court asks France to verify, by an independent body, that the rejection “is not based on any arbitrariness”.

In "exceptional circumstances", such as when "physical integrity" is at stake or a child is "in a situation of great vulnerability", French citizens can assert this general right to repatriation, considers the ECHR.

France “could not prohibit the access of French nationals to (its) territory (…) These were arbitrary decisions” and Paris “must re-examine the requests for repatriation”, welcomed Me Dosé, the one of the lawyers for the parents who seized the court.

What was France's policy on the return of families so far?

Our European neighbours, such as Germany or Belgium, have brought almost all of their jihadists and their families back from Syria in recent years.

This is not the case of France.

In recent years, Paris has repatriated only children and under certain conditions - whether they are orphans, unaccompanied minors or that their mother accepts the departure.

Regarding the wives of French jihadists, the state has long advocated a "case by case" policy, before accepting, for the first time, a massive return last July.

Why this sudden change in doctrine?

Before the July repatriation, with 80 French women and 200 children in the Syrian camps, France had the largest "contingent" in the EU and one of the toughest positions on repatriation.

In 2019, Finland launched the movement by announcing that it wanted to repatriate all children.

In March 2021, Belgium followed with the return of around thirty detained Belgian children, and 21 women.

Germany has brought back 12 women and forty children since 2019.

Paris has been called to order several times.

First by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, as we said, in February 2022. Two months later, in April, it was the defender of rights, Claire Hédon, who had demanded the return "as soon as possible" of all the French children detained in the camps, as well as their mothers.

This Wednesday, a few hours after the decision of the ECHR, the Quai d'Orsay indicated that France was ready for new repatriations "whenever the conditions allow it".

“We did not wait for the decision of the ECHR to move forward,” added the spokesperson for the French government, Olivier Véran.

“We have already changed the rules for examining and repatriating French nationals who are still in northeastern Syria.

Each file, each human situation in the end, is the subject of a meticulous attentive examination”, he justified.

To date, a hundred French women and nearly 250 children are still detained in camps in Syria.

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