Katherine Cornett and Laura Durán.

Q44 Chair: Good afternoon and welcome to today’s meeting of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I am the Member of Parliament from Edinburgh South West, and I am the interim Chair of the committee. We are a cross-party committee and a Joint Committee, which means that we have members from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and from different parties and none. Today we are holding an oral evidence session as part of our inquiry into accountability for Daesh crimes and whether the United Kingdom's response is human rights compliant.

We will be hearing from two panels of witnesses, focusing our questioning to the first panel on the support available to victims of trafficking and exploitation by Daesh. Then we will ask the second panel about the work carried out by the former United Nations special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights in relation to Daesh atrocities.

Turning to the first panel, we are delighted to be joined in person by Katherine Cornett, who is the head of the Syria and Iraq detention project at Reprieve. We are being joined online by Laura Durán, who is the head of policy, advocacy and research at the organisation ECPAT, Every Child Protected Against Trafficking. Thank you very much to both of you for joining us.

Laura, can you give us an overview of the forms of abuse and exploitation that children have experienced in territories formerly occupied by Daesh and the human concerns that arise from this, with particular focus on the United Kingdom’s legal obligations?

Laura Durán: Children have been trafficked to Daesh territories for sexual exploitation, child marriage, domestic servitude and other worse forms of child labour, such as child soldiers—including the use of children as fighters—while others were exploited in other supportive roles, such as cooks, porters, messengers and spies. Some children were used as human shields in the battlefield.

Obviously, many of these children were trafficked. Many were groomed. Overall, many of these children might have been abducted from their homes. Some of them were groomed by being distanced from loved ones or exposing them to extreme violence and subjecting them to extensive physical and psychological abuse.

Quite often, this grooming was initiated by a person that the child trusted. There are examples of this having happened in classrooms, by teachers or by other family members. Some children were also drugged to reduce any fear and hesitation that could have impeded their ability to comply with any of these exploitative tasks. Some children as young as three were taught to decapitate stuffed toys, while others were subjected to a stream of propaganda videos showing horrific violence. Overall, there were significant violations of children’s rights.

We also know that, in some areas formerly occupied by Daesh, there were elaborate systems established to systematically traffic and sexually exploit children. Particularly girls were targeted from ethnic minority groups, who suffered sexual enslavement. There is evidence that slave markets were established and some were forcibly married to fighters, sometimes multiple times.

A recent report by our secretariat at ECPAT International from 2019 has also found that children now living in refugee camps or in camps for internally displaced people in Iraq are facing widescale sexual exploitation and extreme economic hardship. Sexual abuse operations have been uncovered following this report, sometimes operated by camp authorities, with some children being groomed into sexual exploitation in exchange for food or other basic supplies.

Chair: We are very much looking at the human rights obligations of the United Kingdom and the United Kingdom Government. I will ask you to elaborate in a minute about what you mean by grooming and trafficking, but I am really interested in focusing on children who have been groomed in the United Kingdom and children who have been trafficked from the United Kingdom. You are nodding your head. Have the sorts of behaviours and events that you described happened to children who were resident in the United Kingdom?

Laura Durán: Yes, absolutely. There are definitely cases known of children who were groomed, recruited and subsequently trafficked from the United Kingdom. There is a whole set of international law that applies to the United Kingdom, particularly international humanitarian law, which is concerned with the conduct in our conflicts, as well as international human rights law. A lot of the violations that have been committed against these children are also identified by the UN Security Council as six of the gravest violations against children in times of war, which includes their recruitment or use of children in armed forces, rape or other grave sexual violence and the abduction of children, to name a few.

The recruitment of children as soldiers is prohibited under the Rome statute. For the International Criminal Court, children under the age of 15 participating in hostilities is considered a war crime and the enslavement of children is considered a crime against humanity. In the context of human rights law, the strongest set of obligations that bind the United Kingdom are found in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, with Article 48 prohibiting the use of children under the age of 15 in armed conflict. The subsequent optional protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict prohibits the recruitment of children of any age by non-state actors, which Daesh was.

Additionally, other articles in the convention, such as Articles 19, 32, 34, 35 and 36, prohibit violence against children, labour exploitation, sexual exploitation, sale, adoption and trafficking of children, as well as other forms of exploitation. In the case of these children, most importantly, Article 39 sets out obligations of states to take all appropriate measures to promote physical and psychological recovery and social integration of a child victim of abuse or exploitation, as well as child victims of armed conflict.

Beyond that, there are also regional applicable human rights standards, such as those set out in the European Convention on Human Rights, which, in Article 4, prohibits slavery and forced labour. The United Kingdom is also a signatory to the protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children.

Chair: You gave us a pretty good picture there of what you meant by grooming, horrendous examples such as children being taught to decapitate soft toys, small children. Can you give us a better idea of what is meant by trafficking?

Laura Durán: Child trafficking is defined in that protocol that I just mentioned as the recruitment, transportation, receipt or harbouring of a child for the purposes of exploitation. The definition of that exploitation includes sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, criminal exploitation or labour exploitation. Yet the definition in the protocol is expansive enough to account for the evolving nature of human trafficking as a crime. In the context of the worst forms of child trafficking, as defined by International Labour Organization Convention 182, the use of children as child soldiers is also defined as one of the worst forms of child labour. It is also considered part of the enslavement of children, so equivalent to modern slavery as set out in our domestic legislation.

Q45 Baroness Meyer: I am looking at the data. I read your very good report from 2021 and I wanted to know whether there is more up-to-date data on the number of children who may have been trafficked, groomed or otherwise exploited by Daesh fighters in Syria and Iraq.

Laura Durán: That is a really good question. Despite increased international attention and reporting of children who have been exploited by Daesh, there are so many data gaps and discrepancies. One recent study from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation found that there were at least 4,640 children, including UK nationals, who were accounted for in IS in Iraq and Syria. This constituted between 9% and 12% of the group’s total foreign affiliates. These figures do not account for all the children who were exploited by Daesh, particularly children who were recruited from the MENA region, as that information is just not publicly available.

Baroness Meyer: So it is much more than what you reported in the 2021 report.

Laura Durán: Yes, absolutely. We believe that what is publicly known is probably just scratching the surface of the number of children who have been exploited.

Chair: Do you have any idea what percentage of those are British children, or children who came from the United Kingdom or were brought from the UK?

Laura Durán: Between 9% to 12% accounted for the total number of foreign fighters who were children, but we do not have the data disaggregated by countries of origin. The total number accounts for children from Australia, Canada and other countries, not just UK children.

Chair: The figure of 4,640—forgive me if I misunderstood you—included 9% to 12% of what?

Laura Durán: That figure is 9% to 12% of the total of foreign affiliates that IS had.

Chair: Was that including adults?

Laura Durán: Yes. Between 9% and 12% were children from all sorts of different nationalities, including Australian and UK national children.

Baroness Meyer: I presume that you cannot separate those numbers by what type of exploitation or grooming they have been through.

Laura Durán: No. Within this total they were most likely exploited as child soldiers in hostilities. We do not know exactly in what capacity. We do not have a sense of the scale of children who were exploited in other ways—for example, child marriage, domestic servitude, sexual exploitation or other non-fighting roles.

Baroness Meyer: Is there also a religious indoctrination of those children, or are we not aware of that?

Laura Durán: The grooming process included the use of extremist websites. There are reports, for example, of bedtime stories about martyrdom or other types of exposure to violent material. The grooming mechanisms and recruitment techniques often involved some kind of justification with religious connotations.

Q46 Lord Alton of Liverpool: Laura, first of all, congratulations to ECPAT on all the work you have done since 1990 when you were founded, not least in other parts of the world, in south-east Asia. Can I ask you a question about the children themselves? Can you share with the committee what happens next? What has happened to the children who you have been describing, those who we have been able to bring to safety? How can they be de-radicalised? What worries do you have about the future of those children?

Laura Durán: Not many of them have made it back to the UK, unfortunately. For those who have, I question the level of support that they are receiving, not least because they are more than likely not being identified as victims in the context of the framework that I just described and because of the limitations in our regime on the ability to offer the appropriate and necessary support to these children. As I said before, it is clearly set out as an obligation of states to provide this kind of physical and psychological recovery to child victims.

In the first instance, it is really important to ensure that these children are repatriated home and, secondly, once they arrive, that very effective psychological and physical support is provided to these children, now likely young people or maybe young adults, who will really need it in order to enable that recovery from some of these experiences.

Lord Alton of Liverpool: It would be very helpful perhaps, Laura, if you were able to share with the committee, maybe in writing after our hearing, some of the recommendations that we could make to the Government about what we do about the children who have been caught up in these horrific ordeals that you have been describing to us this afternoon, how we can increase the kind of help that is given that you have just described to us. Some clear, sharp, short recommendations would be very welcome.

Laura Durán: Yes, absolutely.

Q47 David Simmonds: I have a very brief data question. Laura, you talked about the trafficking and the grooming. Are you able to share with us any data on the start points for that grooming process, which might shed some light on what patterns there may be in the way that happened?

Laura Durán: In some cases that are known to us, the grooming began either at home or online. There is one serious case review in England of the case of Child W and Child X, who were two siblings aged 17 and 18 who died in Syria. In that case, the child protection around these children had identified that they were being exploited by radicalisation, but there was no linking of that to the wider framework of child exploitation and trafficking. They were never referred for formal identification and never really accessed any specific type of support in order to prevent that recruitment stage from subsequently meaning that they were trafficked and exploited. That case shines a bit of a light on some of the failings of our child protection actors at those initial stages.

Q48 Chair: You listed earlier lots of different legal obligations that bind the United Kingdom under international humanitarian law, international human rights law, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and Article 4 of the ECHR. In your view, has the UK complied with these legal obligations in relation to the kind of children we are talking about, who were groomed while in the UK or trafficked to these areas?

Laura Durán: It is currently ECPAT UK’s view that the UK is failing to comply with many of these obligations. Within the current modern slavery framework, the statutory guidance for identifying victims has no specific reference to children who are trafficked by terrorist groups. Recent legislation that was passed in 2022, the Nationality and Borders Act, effectively disqualifies children where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that they have been involved in what the legislation defines very widely as terrorism-related activity, or subject to a terrorism prevention and investigative measure notice, for example, or those who have been deprived of their citizenship by the Home Secretary. Already in this recent legislative effort you are effectively, in primary legislation, disqualifying children who have been exploited by Daesh, because they will fall within these criteria of the legislation.

Chair: What are they being disqualified from?

Laura Durán: They are being disqualified from protection as victims of trafficking.

Chair: That is very helpful. We will move on now to ask Katherine some questions about the detention of British individuals in north-east Syria.

Q49 Baroness Meyer: Talking about north-east Syria, could you give us an overview of the circumstances in which British citizens, particularly women and children, have been detained in connection to the atrocity committed by Daesh and the conditions of detention facilities?

Katherine Cornett: Thank you very much to the committee for inviting Reprieve to give evidence today. We have been working on the issue of unlawful detentions in north-east Syria since about 2019 and have conducted about nine trips to the region since that time. We know, particularly with respect to British nationals, that there is a very small number of British nationals currently indefinitely and unlawfully detained in north-east Syria specifically. They have been there approximately four years. These individuals were swept up alongside approximately 70,000 other individuals when Kurdish forces took territory formally occupied by Daesh.

There are a couple of important points I need to note about these detainees. First, none of the foreign nationals, including British nationals, has been charged with a crime. They have no direct access to lawyers, no access to judicial review, and their detention is unquestionably unlawful.

Secondly, there is really good reason to believe that many of those who are currently detained, including British nationals, were trafficked there. As you just heard from Laura, trafficking was a core ISIS tactic. It viewed it as important to essentially fulfil and support the state that it was aiming to build.

Reprieve’s own investigations have found that the majority of British women currently detained in north-east Syria, some 60%, are likely victims of human trafficking, and you have heard this from Laura: we are not the only ones who believe that there are trafficking victims currently detained. UK courts have found that British women and girls were specifically targeted by Daesh. The APPG on Trafficked Britons in Syria has conducted an inquiry and found that ISIS was able to traffic vulnerable British women and girls because of systematic failures by the UK’s authorities to prevent this. We know, for instance, that some of these British women were as young as 12 when they were trafficked out of the country.

Lastly, there is a perception that many of these people who were captured by Kurdish forces in 2018 and 2019 must have been there by choice and are still there by choice. That ignores the fact of their trafficking, but it also ignores the significant gender dynamics and gender‑based violence that was at play for these women in that territory. They were often the most vulnerable and the least able to escape because of significant restrictions on movement, security restrictions and of course caring responsibilities for their children.

Turning briefly to the conditions of detention, generally speaking, women and children are held in two internment camps known as al-Hawl and Roj. Men are detained in about a dozen known prisons. Conditions are life-threatening. They have been established by multiple human rights experts to be inhumane and degrading. The children in particular suffer from inadequate food, shelter, medical care and education. The men are held incommunicado—nobody has access to them—in conditions the UN has found to constitute enforced disappearance.

Some 800 or so boys are also held in those facilities. It is notable to say that the UN has reported last year that there may be British boys in those facilities, meaning prisons or what are sometimes known as juvenile detention centres. Conditions there are also, as far as we know, overcrowded and horrific, given the lack of access. There is an uncontained TB outbreak in at least some of those prisons where there may be British boys.

Q50 Lord Alton of Liverpool: Can I ask you about the boys for a moment, Yazidi boys in particular, some of whom have escaped from servitude and have then been marginalised and are on the fringes. No one seems to know what to do with them, because there is a fear that they may have fought alongside Daesh. The international community does not seem particularly interested in them. Can you tell us anything about that?

Katherine Cornett: We do not work specifically on Yazidi cases at the moment. We believe that there are, again, some 70,000 people detained there. This is mostly the detention of roughly 40,000 children. To comment on the number of British nationals first—I will get back to your question—there is a small number of British nationals. Again, the majority of the British detainees are children and the majority of them are under 10 years old. We are really talking about the mass detention of children for counterterrorism purposes. Given the numbers, there is no public reporting, as far as we know, and in fact no knowledge about who exactly is there and where they are. The numbers are too big and the detaining authorities, Kurdish forces, do not have the capacity to sort this out.

Through our investigations, we, Reprieve on the ground, have what we think is a good idea of the British nationals who are there and others. There is no authority that we can appeal to. When it comes to Yazidi boys or any other children who may, as a result of trafficking or other exploitation, have been recruited or used in hostilities, we have no method of triaging who is there, where they are and what the most sensible solution for their situation is.

Q51 Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: How many British citizens are estimated to be currently detained in north-east Syria? How many of those are women and how many are children?

Katherine Cornett: As I have said, there is no public credible information to give us those figures. Based on our trips to the region and our extensive work with families and detainees, we believe that there are about 25 to 30 family units there, which consist, very approximately, of 40 children, 20 women and 10 to 15 men, so the numbers are very small in fact. As I have said, the majority of these detainees are children.

It is also important to bear in mind here that our understanding is that the UK Government do not know how many British nationals are detained there and do not know how many British children are there. Very recently, in the summer, David Davis MP wrote a letter to the Foreign Secretary asking for the numbers of how many British children were detained, particularly on the back of UN reporting that there may be boys in these horrific prisons or juvenile detention centres. The Government responded essentially saying that they do not know.

Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: What are their ages? You mentioned that the children are about 10 or probably younger.

Katherine Cornett: From our data, the majority of the British children who are detained are under 10 years old. We are talking about pretty young kids.

Q52 Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: I really wanted us to think about the UK’s human rights obligations in relation to the British individuals who have been trafficked by Daesh. Is the UK complying with its obligations?

Katherine Cornett: You have heard some of this from Laura. The UK has a number of human rights obligations to the British nationals detained there, and I will focus on three key obligations to potential victims of trafficking. First, the UK has a positive obligation to identify and protect victims of trafficking, pursuant to the Palermo Protocol that Laura mentioned and the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings. It is important to note that, according to the ECHR, this obligation applies even when victims are outside of the UK, because some of the act of trafficking occurred here.

We believe that the Government are not complying with this obligation. Their position is that there is no domestic or international law that requires them to investigate trafficking when the victims are outside the UK. Of course, that is a completely unsatisfactory reason not to investigate allegations of trafficking.

Secondly, the UK has a duty to repatriate victims who are outside of the UK, again based on ECAT and the Palermo Protocol. I should mention here something that I have not touched on before: UK policy is essentially not to repatriate individuals from north-east Syria. We understand that their policy is that they will consider repatriations on a case-by-case basis, which in practice has amounted to repatriations of unaccompanied and separated children. Based on public reporting, there have been about 10 repatriations. They have only repatriated one adult woman who was, again based on public reporting, extremely young when she was taken there by an older male relative. In practice, there seems to be a fairly blanket approach to non-repatriation, even when there is good reason to believe that some of these individuals, as I have said, are victims of trafficking.

Thirdly, the UK has an obligation to respect the principle of non‑punishment, which is essentially that victims of trafficking should not be punished for crimes committed as a direct result of being trafficked. In addition to refusing to offer consular assistance and not repatriating, the UK has adopted again a fairly blanket approach and has deprived British nationals in north-east Syria of their citizenship. We would argue that that is a direct violation of the principle of non-punishment, again where there is good reason to believe that these people are victims of trafficking.

Of course, the refusal to repatriate and citizenship stripping make it inherently much harder to investigate allegations of trafficking. It is really important to bear in mind that, by refusing to investigate, the UK is also failing to ensure accountability for ISIS trafficking that potentially took place in the UK. Indeed, the APPG on Trafficked Britons in Syria has conducted an inquiry and found that not only are we failing to investigate it, but there is some accountability that the UK should take for the fact of this occurring. The APPG on Trafficked Britons in Syria found that there were systematic failures by public authorities to have prevented this trafficking from occurring.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: It is interesting that the concept of coercive control is now understood in British law, certainly in relation to domestic abuse. I wondered whether you had ever heard the idea of coercive control being recognised in relation to the business of, for example, young women who are really adolescents, not long in womanhood, being groomed and coerced into the idea of going to the romance of joining Daesh husbands or partners. I wondered whether that language is used in this relationship.

Katherine Cornett: We certainly use it. ECPAT and other experts who recognise that this trafficking occurred certainly use that language. That is what we believe. Not in all cases but in many cases there was an element of coercive control, particularly for young women. We have seen examples of women being groomed online, but also controlled by partners, husbands or boyfriends, and that was a key element of their trafficking out of the country and into Syria. More specifically, we can do some digging to see whether it has been found by courts and other things. Certainly it is understood in the trafficking‑terrorism nexus that terrorists are targeting vulnerable young women and girls. This is one of the methods they are using.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: In dealing with this evidence, you have been talking about victims or potential victims. I want for a minute to address those who might not be victims but might actually be victimisers, people who are creating victimhood. Do you know whether the same business of not contemplating repatriation for victims is also operating in relation to Daesh fighters and activists, the men? How many of them have been repatriated in the knowledge that they have been involved in grievous human rights abuses?

Katherine Cornett: It is a good question. Again, there have been no repatriations to the UK of men, only of one young woman. It is really important too, as I said at the outset, that none of the British nationals, as far as we know, has been charged with a crime; they have certainly not been given the opportunity to defend themselves. Even in cases where there may be evidence that there are charges to answer, the presumption of guilt is deeply damaging to the rule of law and obscures some of the complexities about what is going on in north‑east Syria.

As I said, there are approximately 10,000 men detained in a variety of prisons, not all of which we know, and they are completely incommunicado. They are in a legal black hole. There are hundreds of boys also detained there. UN reporting from the former special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights and others have indicated that there are probably at least 1,000 men who were initially apprehended as boys and then subsequently moved into adulthood.

In addition, Kurdish forces have developed a practice of forcibly separating boys in these internment camps when they reach adolescence, so at about 13 years old but sometimes as young as nine or 10. They will forcibly separate them from their families and move them to other detention facilities, sometimes these so-called juvenile detention facilities and sometimes also the male prisons. We cannot assume that, simply because people are detained in these prisons, they are guilty of offences, particularly when it comes to boys. They are essentially ageing in to criminality. There is a system, as the former UN special rapporteur has now called it, of cradle-to-grave detention.

It is very complicated when it comes to potential perpetrators, but given the numbers, and given that there has been no real attempt to assess and that we are essentially adding to the detainee population, the only answer is to do an individualised assessment.

We believe that the UK has obligations to repatriate those individuals as well, for two reasons. First, the UN human rights experts have found that states should have an obligation to extend consular assistance when there is a real threat of a violation to the right to life, which we would argue is unquestionably the case, particularly when it comes to the prisons and enforced disappearance of the men.

Secondly, as this committee knows well, the UK has an obligation to prosecute core international crimes, including things like genocide, war crimes and torture. For reasons that we can get into and that the former special rapporteur is well placed to speak to, there is no prospect of accountability in north-east Syria right now. The only place prosecutions will occur is domestically, if these people are brought home. Where and if there are charges to answer, domestic courts are well placed to sort this out, but that will not happen and the longer they are detained there, the less the chances of accountability become.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: You said that there had been a repatriation of one woman that you were conscious of. How many men in your knowledge have been repatriated to Britain, and what has happened to them when they have been repatriated to the UK?

Katherine Cornett: As far as we know, there has been no active repatriation of men by the Government to the UK at all. Some people may have returned earlier, but I do not think that there are very good figures on how many returned, particularly from the situation of detention in north-east Syria. The UK Government have only repatriated unaccompanied and separated children and this one woman.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: We do not know about people who might have returned of their own accord at some point, perhaps seeing how things were panning out, and might have come in. Do we know of the number of prosecutions there have been of people who went out and joined Daesh forces?

Katherine Cornett: I do not have to hand the number of prosecutions. I think there is a figure somewhere. We can get that for you and follow up with the committee.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: That would be very interesting, because we could not get it from the police.

Katherine Cornett: That is interesting. Part of the problem is because I do not think that it is very easy to know how many returnees there have been. We can look into the number of prosecutions.

There are two points that I should make in relation to this. First, we believe that prosecutions are possible. The former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, gave evidence to the APPG on Trafficked Britons in Syria that prosecutions are possible. They can happen. We are well equipped to prosecute these individuals here, again where there are cases to answer.

Secondly, the UK’s refusal to repatriate particularly women and children now stands in stark contrast to what the rest of our allies are doing. The US has long since repatriated most of its nationals, including men, and we have seen, particularly in the last year or two, a surge in repatriations. Germany, France, Canada, Australia and most of Europe have repatriated, admittedly focusing on the women and children, but we have also seen those countries engage in prosecutions. The Germans have been a leader, particularly when it comes to core crimes, so it is hard to believe that the UK could not do the same thing.

Q53 Baroness Meyer: You have probably answered my question. I was a bit unclear on how to visualise it. If so many men are held in prisons and women and children in camps and we have no access to them, how could one repatriate them? Could you explain how the cases of that woman and that child worked?

Katherine Cornett: There is a slight difference. We have some access to the women and children in the camps. It is not very easy to get there or get access, but I have been there. We have been able to visit. There are other human rights organisations and humanitarian organisations that work in the camps in particular. There is no access, as far as I know, to the men, so we have never been able to visit those.

The Kurdish authorities have been plain since the beginning that they would like the foreign nationals to be repatriated. They have in fact publicly and repeatedly asked countries to come get their nationals, because they cannot manage the burden, frankly. Obviously, it is a huge number of people for them to try to manage and they view it as a security issue as well. The Kurdish authorities are willing for these people to go home. Their position is that they only want to release them to their Governments. Essentially, when Governments ask if they can take their nationals, generally speaking the Kurds will release them.

It is important to note also that the chairs of the APPG on Trafficked Britons in Syria wrote to the Kurdish authorities and said, “If the UK were to make a request to repatriate British nationals, would you release them?” The Kurdish authority said, “Unquestionably, we would release them and facilitate that”. They want these people to go home.

I know that sometimes the Foreign Office will say that it does not offer consular services in Syria, which is correct, but, as I said, it has been able to effect at least 10 repatriations of children. I do not want to diminish that this is a tricky thing to do, but it is certainly possible. Again, we have seen multiple other countries do it. The US has also said publicly that it has assisted at least a dozen other countries to repatriate, and it is very happy to offer assistance where needed, so it is certainly possible.

Q54 Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: Who funds the Kurds to do this job on behalf of all the nations who have persons detained in these camps? Who pays?

Katherine Cornett: That is a very good question.

Baroness Meyer: Always follow the money.

Katherine Cornett: I do not have a complete answer. From public reporting and the UN—the former special rapporteur on counterterrorism would probably have some insight into this question as well—we know that the UK has given at least $20 million to at least one prison facility to refurbish, we believe, and to support a prison facility that is holding hundreds of boys alongside the men in north-east Syria. Certainly money goes through the global coalition. We have asked—I believe it was the APPG; we can get you some of this information—the UK Government for more information about funding to these facilities and have not been able to get more details about this.

Chair: That is very interesting.

Q55 Bell Ribeiro-Addy: I know that we do not have very specific figures on exactly how many, but, anecdotally, what would you say the race and religion of those who are detained is? Is it believed to have an impact as to how much effort is being put into repatriating them?

Katherine Cornett: It is an extremely good question. I am glad you asked. I can speak to our clients in north-east Syria. They are all of the Muslim faith, and they are almost entirely from black or brown communities and ethnic minorities. It is important in this respect to bring up the issue of citizenship deprivations.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy: I am coming to that. Can you set out the nature of the power held by the Secretary of State to deprive a person of their British citizenship? How many times would you say that this power has been exercised in this particular instance?

Katherine Cornett: I will go over this very briefly. The power to deprive citizens is found in Section 40 of the British Nationality Act. There is of course power to deprive in cases of fraud. That is not what we are speaking about here, so putting that to one side, the Home Secretary can strip British citizenship when it believes it is so-called conducive to the public good. It is quite a complicated regime, but it is important to bear in mind that persons can also be rendered stateless in some circumstances under this power.

With respect, it is also important to mention, with respect to citizenship stripping, that this is of course a barrier to accountability. It is a signal that the UK Government are not going to take responsibility and are putting this responsibility, essentially, on other states and detaining authorities that may be far less able to manage this.

In terms of the numbers, unfortunately there is a serious lack of transparency when it comes to the use of this power. The Government do not regularly publish comprehensive figures, which highlights the opaque nature of it. We know that, since 2010, there have been at least 217 deprivations under the so-called conducive to the public good power. That is a 4,000% increase in citizenship deprivations compared to the last three decades. The UK now uses this power more than almost any other state; we believe that, other than Nicaragua and Bahrain, the UK is a global leader in using this now.

Because of the lack of information, there is no demographic data about who has been stripped of their citizenship and about their gender, ethnic background or religion. We do not know how many people have been stripped in relation to travel to Iraq or Syria. In 2019, the then Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, said that more than 100 people had been stripped in relation to that travel. Through our own investigations we know of at least 25 people in detention in north-east Syria who have been stripped of their nationality and at least four of them were rendered stateless by that stripping, so after litigation the courts found that it was unlawful and restored their citizenship.

Returning to your other question, it is important to underscore that our position is that citizenship deprivation is fundamentally racist and discriminatory, because it discriminates against people based on their heritage. It has created a two-tier system of citizenship in this country. The vast majority of our clients who have been deprived are black or brown.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy: To clarify, citizenship is being stripped in these instances on the basis that they could gain citizenship elsewhere, so overcoming the issue of statelessness. That is what is making it specifically for somebody, let us say, whose parents or grandparents may have been born in another country.

Katherine Cornett: Exactly, yes. This power can be exercised when there are reasonable grounds to believe that a person can obtain citizenship somewhere else. The problem is that we see that sometimes that state of second nationality says, “No, that person isn’t a national”, so a lot of people have been left effectively stateless.

It is also really important to bear in mind the incredibly harmful effect on children. We know of one woman who was stripped while she was pregnant, so her child is not British and is different from the siblings. We also know of families in north-east Syria who are unable to live legally together anywhere in the world because of deprivation of British citizenship through descent, the parents or the mother being deprived of it and the children potentially having other citizenships. It is incredibly punitive. As the former special rapporteur has said, it is a de facto deprivation also of children.

Chair: How are you unable to say that it is fundamentally racist and discriminatory? I am not quite sure how you can make that judgment.

Katherine Cornett: We take that position, because people who are born in the UK who have no other nationality cannot be stripped. We are not equally under threat of this power.

Chair: I have got you now. I just wanted to be clear.

Q56 Lord Dholakia: Can I put a question to both of you on the impact that the exercise of depriving citizenship will have on the people who are trafficked?

Katherine Cornett: It is a very good question. Our position, from what we know, is that we believe that victims of trafficking have been stripped of their citizenship, so we do not believe that there has been sufficient individual consideration. It looks to be a blanket policy of citizenship deprivation of anyone who travelled, so the UK is punishing these women for their victimhood. We know of women who have been stripped even when they travelled as children, which is very suggestive of having been trafficked, so they are being punished for their victimhood as children. That violates the principle of non-punishment that we spoke about earlier. As I said before, it harms not only these potential victims of trafficking but their children.

Laura Durán: I would say, very similarly to what Katherine is saying, that these tactics are a form of exile for children. They will prevent them from being identified and from being protected as victims based on all the UK’s obligations that I cited before. We also agree that they contravene the non-punishment provision, which is a recognised principle of international law. They are causing so much significant harm to these children and preventing the UK Government from fulfilling their obligations.

Lord Dholakia: Are there better ways of dealing with people rather than depriving them of their citizenship and making them refugees?

Katherine Cornett: We are fundamentally calling for British nationals and those who have been deprived to be repatriated to the United Kingdom. Individualised assessments can be made. Victims of trafficking can be offered the appropriate support and rehabilitation. Children can be looked after. Where there may be charges to answer, the UK domestic courts are well equipped to deal with them.

Laura Durán: I agree. Our primary recommendation is also that that they are repatriated. If they are identified as victims, they need to be afforded the recovery, social reintegration, and physical and psychological protection that they are entitled to.

Q57 Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: I wanted to ask about the children and where they are born. Even if they are born in this country, if their parents are not British at a certain time, which is 1983, they are not British. Where were the children born who are in detention at the moment?

Katherine Cornett: I would have to look into our data. Some of the older children would have been born here and the younger children would have been born in Syria or Iraq. I do not have the exact figures, off the top of my head, of how many were born here and how many were born there, but certainly the younger ones were born in Syria and Iraq. Depending on their parents’ citizenship status and when they were deprived, they would be British citizens or not.

This gets into complicated issues of citizenship deprivation and how the case law is working right now, but we have children who we would argue are, if not stateless, then de facto stateless, because they were born after their mothers were deprived. There is no realistic prospect of them exercising the citizenship of their second nationality, because many of these women were subjected to sexual violence, including forced marriage; they were forcibly married to men, subjected to sexual violence and had children as a result. The gentleman may have died or gone and the ability to establish that paternity and the nationality of the second state is pretty fictitious.

Q58 Lord Alton of Liverpool: Can I return to a point that Lord Dholakia was asking you about, Katherine, and ask both you and Laura partly about the role of NGOs and organisations such as ECPAT and Reprieve? How do you collect evidence, if you do? How do you collect testimonies, if you do? How do you make that available in the pursuit of justice?

Returning to the question of whether there is a better way of doing things, I noticed that the Netherlands has initiated repatriation of men and women and instigated proceedings against them in their courts. Recently, there was a successful case in Germany, which Amal Clooney was involved in, which demonstrated that an outright genocide had been committed against the Yazidis. We must not lose sight of that, and you have not in your answers.

Can you tell us what role you play in the collection of evidence? The International Committee of the Red Cross, for instance, will not collect evidence because it has a different role to play. Do you feel that, in both your roles, you can help the authorities to bring people to justice?

Katherine Cornett: That is a very good question. Our mandate does not involve the collection of evidence. We gather information. As I said, we have gone to the region and to the camps multiple times, and interview detainees in the camps where we are allowed. We have done many hours of interviews with British women. We do not collect evidence. It is not within our mandate.

It is important also to bear in mind that while they are in detention, as I said, they have no direct access to lawyers. Our interviews are not confidential. We were talking to an accountability authority, trying to get information about the child soldiers and the recruitment and use of children. We know that many of these children are probably detained alongside their perpetrators. It is simply not a safe environment in which to be collecting evidence, and it is not within our mandate. We would also not do so in a situation of detention, particularly where they are not confidential interviews and they do not have access to legal counsel. The only way for those kinds of accountability investigations to happen is, again, through repatriation.

Laura Durán: In a similar way, our mandate does not extend to that sort of role. Obviously, if we came across any of that information, we would pass it on to the appropriate child protection actors in the UK, for example, or to law enforcement. In a similar situation to Reprieve, that would be completely outside our mandate.

Lord Alton of Liverpool: As you said earlier, Katherine, there will be children in particular who will be there all their lives, from the cradle to the grave. Equally, there will be people there who did commit heinous crimes and offences. You said that the British Government do not know the numbers; they do not know the identities of many of the people who are there. If you were recommending to this committee what the Government should do in the future, would it be along those lines—that we should have people on the ground collecting evidence and witness statements, but also investigating the things that you are not able to?

Katherine Cornett: That is a very good question. The British Government may well know the identities of the people there, but they are certainly not telling us. Our recommendation would not be that the British Government go there and collect evidence. As I said, it would not be safe or fair to do so. These people have been subjected to indefinite arbitrary detention for years. Some of them have been subjected to ill treatment. As we said, the men have arguably been disappeared. It is not an environment in which you could safely conduct evidence gathering, and it would become extremely problematic in any future trial if there was an attempt to do so.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: That is the point, David.

Lord Alton of Liverpool: I am asking the question; I am not making a statement.

Katherine Cornett: Our recommendation would be that the only way to collect evidence, where there is evidence to be collected, and secure accountability for trials is through repatriation.

Lord Alton of Liverpool: Do you mean the Dutch model?

Katherine Cornett: Yes, the Dutch model. You cannot conduct investigations on the ground as things are happening. You could talk to victims, presumably. You cannot question people who are unlawfully detained while they are in that situation. As I said and I am sure you will get into, right now there is no realistic prospect of local justice.

Q59 Chair: Would it be fair to say that, in order for the United Kingdom Government to fulfil their legal obligations, they should be identifying and repatriating UK citizens, then carrying out the necessary inquiries to see whether they ought to be being prosecuted effectively for war crimes, or whether they are vulnerable women or children who ought to be getting the kind of support that Laura talked about earlier?

Katherine Cornett: Absolutely, yes. As a final remark, it is important to note that the UK policy is supporting a situation of total impunity.

Chair: That is a very good point. Our final tie-up question for you both is whether you have any recommendations for improvements in the UK’s legal framework to ensure adequate protection of children and British citizens who were or are detained in Syria. You have just answered that question. You think that we should be identifying who is a UK citizen, bringing them back here and prosecuting them or giving them support if they in fact are victims. Is that fair to say?

Katherine Cornett: Yes, absolutely.

Chair: Can I thank you both very much indeed for a fantastic evidence session? It was very thorough, extremely concerning and thought-provoking. We are very grateful to you both.

Examination of Witnesses

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin and Dr Anne Charbord.

Q60 Chair: Thank you very much for joining us for the second part of our evidence session this afternoon. I will introduce you properly so that those watching the committee in person or online can know exactly who you are.

We are delighted to be joined by Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, who was the special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights from 2017 to November 2023. She is a regents professor at the University of Minnesota and a professor of law at Queen’s University Belfast. We are delighted to have you with us this afternoon, and to be joined by Dr Anne Charbord, who is an international human rights lawyer focusing on human rights and security. You are here in your capacity as senior legal adviser to the professor. Thanks very much, both of you, for joining us.

We have a number of questions. Perhaps I could direct the first question to you, Professor. We understand that you have just finished your tenure as the UN special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights. Could you just give us an overview of the special rapporteur’s mandate and the role of the United Nations in relation to the conflict in Syria and Iraq? We will then have some slightly more focused questions.

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin: I would be very happy to. I am grateful for the opportunity to join you. As special rapporteur, I was an independent expert appointed by the Human Rights Council. It is a political appointment, although you serve as an independent expert when in role. A special rapporteur undertakes three essential functions.

The first is to undertake country visits at the request or with the agreement of the Government in question. Visits can also include things like technical visits. As special rapporteur, I and my team, including Dr Charbord, conducted a technical visit to north-east Syria last July.

The second capacity or function is to issue reports to the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council. In respect of north-east Syria and Iraq, the mandate had issued numerous reports on the situation of detention as well as issues related to citizenship stripping, prosecution or the capacity to hold individuals accountable for serious violations of international law on the territory, and current concerns that were issued in my last General Assembly report on the commission of core crimes in places of detention.

The third capacity of a special rapporteur, which has also been exercised in relation to north-east Syria and Iraq, is related to individual communications to member states. In that regard, I would note that, as special rapporteur, I issued multiple communications to the United Kingdom Government concerning the ongoing detention of a number of their nationals in north-east Syria.

The UN has a much broader role than the role of a special rapporteur. I would note that there is a large humanitarian presence, particularly in north-east Syria. I should note that that humanitarian presence, of course, struggles significantly with issues of access and with the ongoing insecurity in the territory.

Other points of interface include the role of the special investigative mechanism—the IIIM—which is responsible for addressing the issues of core crimes and serious violations of international law that have taken place on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, as well as the Syrian commission, which, again, is an independent commission that has been appointed to gather evidence and investigate ongoing concerns of violations of international law on the territory of Syria.

Those are just some of the roles that the UN plays. There are, of course, multiple actors and agencies, from UNICEF to UN Women, the Office of the High Commissioner, the World Food Programme and UNHCR, all of which are engaged in different ways in both territories.

Chair: You said that you have made multiple communications to the United Kingdom Government concerning a number of the UK’s citizens who are held or detained in north-east Syria. Do you have any feel for how many UK citizens are detained there? Do you have any stats?

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin: It is worth noting that, as previous speakers have said, there is some lack of clarity about overall numbers. I can speak specifically to the number of British nationals whom I believe to be held in al-Roj and al-Hawl camps following my visit there in July. I understand that there are three British nationals held in al-Hawl camp and 27 individuals held in al-Roj camp. Of the three in al-Hawl, one is an adult woman and two are children. In respect of al-Roj camp, I understand 10 of those detained to be women and the remainder to be children.

In general, there has been no access to the places of detention, particularly the prisons in north-east Syria, but I was able, in negotiation with a non-state actor and with the territorial state, to have access to a number of places of detention where men and boys are being detained. One of my overriding concerns is that the detaining authority does not provide names or numbers of who is detained, leading to a finding on my part that we have incommunicado detention and enforced disappearances in the prison system—and it is a system—of the Syrian Democratic Forces, by virtue of the fact that the most basic requirement of identifying who is in your prison is not satisfied by the detaining authority.

Chair: Thank you. That is very concerning.

Q61 Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: First, let me say a great thank you to you and Dr Anne Charbord for the work that you do. I want to ask about the main human rights concerns that you have identified in your country visits as special rapporteur to territories affected by the Daesh atrocities. Just give us a sense of the horror of that, or the bright bits—I do not know whether there are any bright bits.

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin: I am afraid to say that I am not sure that there are bright bits, but I can give you an overview of what Dr Charbord and I observed in July, which is consistent with the reporting that my office had undertaken for six years prior.

First, all these places are places of detention. Words like “camps” are not appropriate, because no one is free to leave them. We are in a situation of mass arbitrary detention, primarily of children. I would underscore that in all the places of detention I visited, including places of detention that were described as adult prisons, when I walked from cell to cell, and Anne and I opened doors, we found children in multiple cells, some as young as 11 years old.

The third challenge in this territory, which is true of the prison but also of others, is a lack of the essential means to survive with dignity. Partly due to the Turkish occupation of a slice of the territory and the turning off of the water spigot, as it were, there is a massive water supply problem, which is also evident in the places of detention. Food is a challenge. It is mostly the World Food Programme that is providing food. Medical support in all these places of detention is an enormous challenge.

It is also fair to say that, in a prison like al-Hawl, there is a prison in a prison. I can speak of walking through al-Hawl camp and observing large numbers of mostly Iraqi and Syrian men wandering around the camp, but the part of the prison called the annexe, which holds third-country nationals—including, we believe, a British national and her children—is inaccessible.

It is really important to note that I was able to interview some individuals from the annexe, and we were aware that many of those held there have been interrogated by the intelligence services of multiple states; I should say that that includes the United Kingdom. There is no access for lawyers or for human rights experts in general—mine was the first in the last four years—but there is, we believe, regular access for intelligence services of third countries to that setting.

Finally, maybe I can say some more about the situation of children, which was dire in the two facilities that we visited, and I note that, in the adult male prisons that I visited, specifically Panorama prison, I made a finding that core crimes, meaning serious war crimes or crimes against humanity, are being committed against the detained population by virtue of what I observed first‑hand to be mass starvation of the detainees as well as a mass—

Chair: We have lost the professor at a very compelling part of her evidence, although this looks quite hopeful.

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin: I am back. That is a good place to stop.

Chair: We were on the edge of our seats, because you were telling us something deeply shocking. You said that core crimes are being committed against the detained population, and then we lost you.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: It was about starvation.

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin: In my report to the General Assembly, which I can share with the committee, I made the finding that, in Panorama prison, which is the high-security prison that members of your committee will perhaps know as the place from which the ISIL attack took place last January, we observed first‑hand sizable numbers of emaciated, starving men.

We also observed, and had confirmed for us by the SDF, the detaining authority, that there is a widespread outbreak of TB, which we estimated to be at 75% of the population. I should note that this is a British prison, built largely by the British Government, down to the square plugs that we observed in a number of the rooms that we walked through.

Chair: We have lost you again.

Baroness Meyer: Where is she calling from?

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin: I am in Belfast, but somehow the Belfast bugs are in the system. If I lose you, Anne can certainly pick up, but maybe I will stop there. That gives you a good sense of what we saw in north-east Syria, and I would particularly underscore my concern about the commission of core crimes in places of detention.

Chair: We hear you.

Q62 Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: I had a follow-up question. Professor Ní Aoláin, I just wanted to ask about the obligations of the UK in relation to British citizens currently detained there. Have you applied your mind to that possibility, given that you were coming before a British parliamentary committee?

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin: Yes. While mandate holder, I issued a number of position papers and expressed a number of views to the General Assembly and to the Human Rights Council, but also in amicus briefs to the European Court of Human Rights, where we were a party to a number of proceedings, including the Shamima Begum proceedings.

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: She has gone again. Anne might want to fill in.

Chair: Dr Charbord, could you pick up from there?

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: Fionnuala is back.

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin: I am back. I will ask Anne to speak to this issue, because my computer seems to be cutting in and out. Dr Charbord was the leading expert on my team while I was special rapporteur on this issue, and she can speak to the issues of jurisdiction, but also to the mandate’s view that the UK Government have an obligation under the Geneva conventions in respect of their citizens who are currently held in prisons in north-east Syria. Anne, maybe I can pass to you to speak about the jurisdiction issues.

Dr Anne Charbord: In the case before the European Court of Human Rights which the former special rapporteur just mentioned, the special rapporteur argued for a functional or control-of-rights approach to jurisdiction, which is fundamentally rooted in a duty to act with due diligence and to take positive steps when states have nationals who are at risk of serious human rights violations, even when these nationals are being detained or other reasons are brought. The serious violations that we are talking about here are gross violations of international human rights law or core crimes. That is what I will say on the question of jurisdiction, so this would apply to the UK.

The former special rapporteur also found, with regard to international obligations, that under Geneva convention Common Article 1 states are bound to ensure respect for the provisions of IHL, which includes Common Article 3, which is really the basic protection that all individuals are entitled to in any circumstances.

Another component arises out of Common Article 1 of the Geneva convention, which is a positive external component that implies that states that are not a party to the conflict, which would be the case here, have an obligation to exert their influence and take every possible step to safeguard compliance with Common Article 3 of the Geneva conventions.

States also have an obligation to prevent and suppress serious violations of international law, particularly regarding peremptory norms of international law, some of which were mentioned by the former special rapporteur earlier. Under the regime of state responsibility, states are under an obligation not to knowingly aid and assist in the commission of violations of international law or international human rights law, including by knowingly providing an essential facility or financing the activity in question. Of course, international core crimes can implicate member states by omission or failure to act, if we are in the territory of core international crimes and their prevention.

Chair: By letting a British-built prison be used as a place of arbitrary detention of people who are being subjected to core crimes, could the British Government be knowingly aiding or assisting in the commission of a core crime?

Dr Anne Charbord: The special rapporteur did not go as far as to say that. It is a possibility. It is not really for her to say. Again, there is insufficient evidence. There is evidence of the building, but she did not go as far as to say that.

Chair: She said that it is possible that the UK could be complicit. That is a possibility.

Q63 Bell Ribeiro-Addy: We heard from the last panel about the recruitment of children being a war crime, and we have now heard from you about security services having direct access to these prisons or camps, as they are sometimes called. How would we determine a situation in which the security services from various countries, such as the US or Canada, have potentially used children as a means of obtaining counterterrorism information? How would we qualify that? Would that qualify as a war crime?

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin: We addressed this question directly in my last General Assembly report. It really goes to the children in armed conflict agenda and whether those children in detention are being used in a way that breaches international law. It was my view, as then special rapporteur, that the threshold of use was met specifically because children were being commodified in order to access information coercively from them about their engagement, or that of their parents or other people around them, in terrorist or extremist activity.

Again, it is worth bearing in mind that these children, when being accessed for the purposes of interrogation, have no access to lawyers. There is no legal process. There is, as we defined it in my General Assembly report, a revolving door. Children are often interrogated by more than one security service.

I have certainly made my views known to the SRSG on children in armed conflict, because this, of course, raises two very specific questions. One is whether the situation of children in north-east Syria, including British nationals, should be listed in the Secretary-General’s report—that these children are being used for purposes that meet the definition of use under the children in armed conflict agenda.

The second is the legal responsibility of states that are engaging in interrogation of children or enabling or facilitating, through the provision of resources or training to the detaining power, the capacities that then allow them to undermine the human rights of children in a situation of armed conflict, including British children.

Q64 Lord Alton of Liverpool: Can I take you on to the question of the United Kingdom’s response to the atrocity crimes that Daesh has been involved in and whether we are compliant with our obligations under international law? I am cognisant that, in the next few days, we will commemorate the 75th anniversaries of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

In 2019, I was able to go to the Bardarash refugee camp in northern Iraq. I also took evidence from Yazidis and from people from the Assyrian and other minorities there. As you can imagine, because you have seen it yourself, some of it was pretty shocking. I was disturbed to find that there had not been people from the international community taking evidence statements or collecting witness testimonies, and I doubt very much that many of the people involved will ever be brought to justice. What is your view on that, and how have we done as a nation?

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin: As mandate holder, I had made an enormous and sustained commitment to the protection of the rights of victims of terrorism. That means that we not only give compassion and solidarity to victims of terrorism, but that we hold those who commit acts of terrorism responsible for the violations that have been committed.

When I was special rapporteur, we issued a position paper on prosecution, which I would be happy to share with the committee. Essentially, my view was that we were failing in our obligations to prosecute the core crimes that were committed on the territory of Syria and Iraq, and we were doing that in a number of ways.

The first is that, as far as I can assess—and we have been there and seen it first-hand—there is no capacity to prosecute these crimes on the territory. We will, I suspect, take the view that the Syrian Arab Republic will not be a suitable venue to prosecute these crimes, for a range of reasons related to the integrity and fairness of that legal system.

It is also clear that, if the non-state actor is unable to provide lists of names of the persons it currently holds in detention, and is unable to provide the minimum standards for conditions of confinement that are human rights and international law-compliant, it is unlikely—it seems to me almost magical thinking—that they could, in fact, run trials that are compliant with the Genocide convention’s expectations or the UDHR. That means that the sole route to accountability, in my view, is repatriation. It is not only the only international law-compliant return consistent with the Security Council resolutions; it is also the only way that we get accountability.

I had the privilege to travel to Germany this summer with my senior legal adviser, and we were able to observe first-hand, meet with German officials and speak to Germany about its current highly innovative and very forceful commitment to accountability for crimes that have taken place on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic. It is doing so by spending resources, by investing in the capacity of the prosecutorial services and, most importantly, by being willing to take people back so that they can try them. Respectfully, I would take the view, given the almost zero return by the United Kingdom, that zero return means zero accountability.

Q65 Lord Alton of Liverpool: Thank you very much. That more than adequately answers most of my questions. The genocide convention requires us to prevent, to protect and to punish, and, since Bosnia, also to predict. Is the United Kingdom doing any of those things satisfactorily in connection with these Daesh crimes?

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin: I would say that we are not. Three issues arise. The first is prevention. If we look at the current state of affairs not only in north-east Syria but in north-west Syria, we see a situation of enormous fragility and instability. The Global Coalition against Daesh, which has proclaimed success in overcoming the challenge of Daesh, has, in my view, stopped short of the mark by failing to address the subsequent challenge of mass arbitrary detention.

As I have said before, it is not rocket science to understand that, if you hold thousands and thousands of people, mostly children, in detention for most of their lives, we can most likely predict another cycle of violence, including precisely the kinds of crimes that you are identifying. We are not doing prevention, because we are not addressing the core remaining problem, which is the creation of the conditions conducive to further violence on the territory of north-east and north-west Syria, and the resurgence of Daesh and other non-state armed groups. We can do prevention adequately only if we address the remaining challenge of detention.

Other speakers have spoken to protection, but my mandate was clear on this when I was special rapporteur. We watched, with some degree of horror, how the vast majority of the population in detention is a child population, a population that is arguably, as we have set out very coherently in an end of mission statement in a General Assembly report, the subject of the commission of core international crimes. We are not protecting those children.

Perhaps the best example is the arbitrary separation of juvenile boys from their mothers. I remind the committee that the ICC has just issued a warrant for the arrest of the President of a P5 country and his children’s commissioner for the mass arbitrary separation of children, but I would underscore that precisely the same practice, at a greater and more sustained pace, is happening in north-east Syria. We are not protecting those children, so we have a long way to go.

This is not just a human rights argument; it is a security argument. North-east Syria has been a tinderbox before. If we do not address the conditions that are conducive to violence and the arbitrary detention, my deep fear is that we will see another sustained cycle of violence in this territory.

Lord Alton of Liverpool: Thank you, Professor Ní Aoláin. Dr Charbord, do you agree with Professor Ní Aoláin that we are completely negligent when it comes to compliance with our duties under the Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide?

Dr Anne Charbord: Yes. It is not just the crime of genocide but the prevention of these very core and serious human rights violations such as the special rapporteur mentioned, including mass arbitrary detention, which is a systematic practice in north-east Syria on a massive scale.

Q66 Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: Could the UK be charged with being complicit in what you just described as happening in the detention centres? It is the UK’s building and it has control over it.

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin: Thank you for raising the question. My last General Assembly report as special rapporteur raised the proximity question for member states, including the United Kingdom, whose nationals are held and who are providing significant and sustained support to the detaining authority.

I want to be clear that I do not make the case that there is, at this point, sufficient evidence to point to responsibility, but we are in the territory of responsibility and proximity to core crimes for a number of states that are supporting and engaging, and of not holding the non-state actor to its fundamental human rights and humanitarian law obligations.

When I was special rapporteur, we had a good and strong dialogue with the Global Coalition against Daesh, and I made clear to it what the consequences of the failure to address these violations would be. They move you into the territory of complicity or association with the commission of core crimes. That is not a place that any leading democracy wants to be in, and it is certainly not a place a leading democracy should be in when it has within its grasp the capacity to solve some of these challenges—most explicitly, to bring people home.

This is what the United States has done. This is what we have seen a number of other countries such as France do at a significant scale. The United Kingdom is lagging behind enormously. On the sheer numbers, the UK is not so differently positioned from France. In fact, its number of detainees, as I have illustrated to you, is far smaller, yet we see, again, a lack of political will, a lack of commitment to prevention and a lack of commitment to accountability. Just to circle back to your question, this may place the United Kingdom in a legal jeopardy of its own, if the non-state actor it is supporting in various ways is engaged in the commission of core crimes under international law.

Q67 Chair: I want to pick up one thing with you, Professor. In the previous panel, we talked about the UK’s use of deprivation of citizenship powers. I want to get your view on the extent to which that might amount to violations of international and domestic human rights obligations.

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin: Thank you for the question. I will speak but invite my senior legal adviser, who in previous years has led the mandate’s work on this issue.

First, we would say very clearly that we do not know the scale of citizenship stripping that has taken place. We encountered individuals in the camps who were unsure whether they still had citizenship, meaning that it is unclear that the practice of citizenship stripping meets the basic requirements of being non-arbitrary, precisely because it does not allow persons who are currently detained to have a reasonable prospect of engaging in any legal process that rebuts presumptions or provides exculpatory evidence that allows them, for example, to demonstrate that they may, in fact, be stateless if their citizenship is taken away.

The second really important point here is that citizenship is the right to have rights. The best way I can think of explaining citizenship is that it is a gateway right. It is the thing that allows you to get other things—the fundamental rights that the state affords its individual citizens. The removal of citizenship in the context of north-east Syria means that the individuals who are citizenship-stripped are left in an entire legal blackhole, including, in particular, the children who are left behind.

The third issue that I would underscore, which was raised by another speaker—I will turn to Dr Charbord on this—is the discriminatory aspects of the application of citizenship stripping. It is, again, deeply concerning that there appears to be a practice of citizenship stripping that infringes upon the basic requirement of non-discrimination in respect of the capacity to access citizenship. Anne, did you want to add to that?

Dr Anne Charbord: We would be very happy to share our position paper on citizenship stripping with the committee. I would also note that, from what we understand, many women and children have been stripped of their citizenship by the United Kingdom, which is not only contrary to international law, as the former special rapporteur has just highlighted, but simply continues and entrenches the detention crisis in the region.

Q68 Chair: We would be very keen to see your position papers both on prosecutions that you mentioned and on citizenship stripping. To that end, do you have any recommendations for improvements to the UK’s legal framework and policies in order to ensure that the United Kingdom is compliant with its human rights obligations in countering terrorism and preventing and prosecuting international crimes such as genocide? You would probably tell me that the UK needs to repatriate its citizens and prosecute and/or support them here, depending on the evidence that the UK then gathers. I do not want to put words in your mouth, but would that be a fair summary?

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin: Yes. The bottom line is that we absolutely believe that, both as a security matter and as a human rights matter, repatriation from north-east Syria is urgent.

In the meantime, there are a number of things that the United Kingdom can do to ameliorate the current situation of the men, women and children who are detained.

The first is to ensure that they transparently identify who is there, and I would underscore how important that is, given that, in the Panorama prison, which I visited in July, if you have a mass outbreak of untreated TB and you have starvation of the male population—we know that there are British nationals in that prison—the WHO’s position is that 50% of people will die.

As a matter of urgency, the United Kingdom needs to clarify the situation of its men who are detained in these detention facilities, which it has built and paid for to a significant degree, and to inform the families of those men whether they are still alive or are dead. I cannot think of anything more basic or fundamental. At the heart of the Magna Carta is the right to know whether a person is detained and in what condition they are detained. I would start with that.

The second is that we have identified, in communications with the British Government, a number of adolescent boys—I am talking about British national boys—aged nine and upwards, who are at significant risk of being arbitrarily separated from their mothers. That has happened mostly with violence and with enormous harm to both the boys and their mothers. Again, we would recommend that this committee request that the British Government use their influence to prevent the mass arbitrary separation of children from their mothers, consistent with their support of the ICC’s position that the mass separation of children may, in particular circumstances, constitute a war crime.

Our third recommendation is that we are deeply concerned about the access to medical care for British nationals who are held in the al-Hawl annexe and the al-Roj camp. Many of the women—I met with British women nationals, particularly in al-Roj camp—suffer from a variety of serious illnesses, and they are extremely vulnerable. Again, I would encourage this committee to request that the Government use their influence to ensure that their nationals, particularly the most vulnerable children, have access to medical attention.

Finally, we need consistent, independent access to these places of detention and, again, for the UK to be cognisant of both its security interests and its human rights interests in these places of detention. There must be independent access, and that means independent UN access and the independent access of states. We know that your intelligence services are there already, and we know that other countries send different kinds of delegations.

We absolutely need to make sure that there are prosecutions for serious crimes that have been committed. The victims of terrorism in north-east Syria deserve a right to accountability no less than the victims of terrorism in the United Kingdom or anywhere else. The idea that we have a second-class status for those crimes, when they happen in places far away where essentially we do not live up to our commitments to the victims of terrorism is one of the most tragic outcomes of all of this and ensures that we do not live up to the promise that there will not be impunity. There is effective impunity for Daesh in the north-east Syrian Arab Republic, because we have not prosecuted the individuals who we can prosecute.

Chair: Thank you very much. That is extremely clear, and we hear you. We are very grateful to you both for such a thorough evidence session. The situation is much worse than certainly I had appreciated. You have given us a lot to think about and a lot of excellent material for us to work on in our report. Thank you very much indeed to both of you.