Thousands of children who fled the collapse of ISIS face a lifetime of detention in North East Syria if they are not repatriated to their home countries, reports The Times.
Many of the boys have been forcibly separated from their mothers whilst the detention facilities in which other women and children are held are littered with landmines, grenades and assault rifles.
Children are forced to “suffer indefinite detention,” Maya Foa said. “They hear of the male prisoners and they’re terrified. We know disease and death [and] torture is rife inside the adult prisons. That fear is a form of psychological torture.”
“These are not a different species of children, they are just like any other child. What we’re doing to them is the most harmful thing we could do to them – with no end in sight.”