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 al-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 al-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 al-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 al-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.
