We are incredibly happy to announce that we have received the Human Rights Prize 2024. We are very proud and grateful to have received such a prestigious award for our work in the fight to bring the Danish children home from the Syrian detention camps.
The Human Rights Prize is not only an acknowledgment of our work. It is also an important recognition of these children, who desperately need all forms of support after having experienced Denmark turning its back on them and abandoning them at the time when they needed help the most.
The Supreme Court
On Thursday, August 29, the Supreme Court ruled in our favor that 8-year-old Jonas should be brought home from the Roj camp along with his mother. It was a decision we were incredibly relieved and happy about.
Now, Jonas can finally come home and have the safe and normal childhood he deserves.
On June the 24th on Midsummer's Eve by the lakes in Copenhagen, our founder and director, Natascha Rée Mikkelsen, gave a speech by the bonfire about the Danish children who have been unjustly imprisoned in the Syrian detention camps.
You can read the speech on Danish speeches HERE (JUNE 2024)
On May 28, 2024, RTC-Denmark won the Benny Andersen Prize. We are incredibly proud to have received such a prestigious award for our work in the fight to bring Danish children home from the Syrian detention camps.
A big thank you to Grandparents for Asylum for nominating us for the prize, and thanks to all our supporters, volunteers, and the entire RTC team who make our work possible.
There are still around 30,000 children locked up in the al-Hol and Roj camps under inhuman conditions.
AMNESTY REPORT ON THE EXTREMELY CRITICAL SITUATION IN NORTHEASTERN SYRIA
Amnesty International published a report in April this year on the extremely critical situation in northeastern Syria for the more than 56,000 people who have been captured. This includes 30,000 children, 14,500 women, and 11,500 men.
According to the report, the conditions in the Roj and al-Hol camps are marked by inhuman and degrading conditions, killings, and widespread use of torture. The report describes, among other things, the inhumane, unhygienic, and life-threatening conditions with insufficient access to food, water, and healthcare that the 30,000 children are living under
In December 2023, the European Parliament's Committee on Petitions sent another letter to the Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, where they seconded RTC's appeal for the Danish government to act in line with international conventions, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the child, and ensure that the boy's suffering in the detention camp should be taken into account in any judicial assessment of the case.
The letter comes after RTC's visit to Brussels in November 2023, where we once again raised the case about the seven-year-old boy who is not allowed to come home with his mother from the Roj detention camp to the European Parliament.
To defeat ISIS and prevent more children from becoming victims of war and extremism, we need to have a global humanitarian coalition in northeastern Syria.
Alongside RTC - Sweden and RTC - USA, RTC- Denmark has written a piece in the Middle East Institute about the need for a far more considerable humanitarian effort in the Kurdish-majority area in Syria.
READ THE ARTICLE HERE (SEPTEMBER 2023)
The security situation in the al-Hol detention camp has worsened in the last few years. Up to 40.000 children live in the camp, where half of them are under the age of 12. They are daily in danger of being assaulted or killed. On average, three people are killed a week in the camp.
In June, two of the Danish boys were brought home from the Roj detention camp after almost five years of imprisonment.
The children were separated from their mother immediately after they arrived in Denmark. She has been their sole caregiver in the many years they were held captive in Syria.
Due to this, RTC recommends alternatives to imprisonment and as much contact with their mother as possible to prevent further trauma to the children.
In May, RTC traveled to Bruxelles with the family of the seven-year-old Danish boy who has yet to be offered permission to return home from the Roj detention camp with his mother.
Here, RTC presented the case on the evacuation of the Danish children from the Syrian detention camps in front of the European Parliament.
The European Parliament's Committee on Petitions supported RTC's case and later appealed to the Danish government to bring all the Danish children home from the Syrian detention camps.
The Danish Board of Health recommends evacuating the seven-year-old Danish boy without an offer to come home with his mother within a few weeks and, at the latest, within three months.
They state that the boy has trouble with his breathing, hearing, and cognitive and social development.
It was invalid to strip Danish citizenship away from a Danish-Iranian woman in Roj, according to the Danish Supreme Court in March 2023.
As a result of this judgment, she and her two children were offered evacuation from the detention camp.
Repatriate the Children - International advises all countries to repatriate their citizens from the Syrian detention camps and prisons. The situation in and around the camps has worsened significantly, and the risk of the children dying has increased.