Syria04 July, 20263 min read
Paris Appeal Challenges France’s Refusal To Repatriate Two Girls From Roj Camp
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French lawyer appeals Paris' refusal to repatriate two girls from Roj Camp. Ages reported as 10-12 (Al-Jazeera) and 9-11 (Le Parisien).
Roj Camp girls appeal
An appeal in Paris challenges an administrative decision refusing to repatriate two girls from the Roj Camp in northeastern Syria, where relatives of people suspected of belonging to jihadist groups are detained. The appeal says the two minors, aged 10 and 12, have been in the Roj Camp since December 2018, and attorney Marie Douzie said the elder was born in France and that the girls have been in “a state of extreme vulnerability.”
Douzie said she filed requests with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to repatriate the girls but received no reply, and the appeal argues that “the absence of a reply essentially amounts to a lack of justification for the denial, and constitutes a violation of a ruling issued by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in 2022.” The attorney also pointed to France’s repatriation record, saying it has repeatedly repatriated or brought back or returned or brought home or resettled orphans, including in 2019 when it refused any repatriation, and she cited “repatriation operations for mothers and children of other nationalities carried out since the death of this woman.”
Court orders reexamination
On Thursday, March 13, the Paris Administrative Court annulled the Quai d’Orsay’s refusals to repatriate French children held in northeastern Syria and ordered the Foreign Affairs Ministry to reexamine these decisions. L’Humanité said 120 French children still live in the camps of northeastern Syria with about fifty mothers under Kurdish guard since the fall of the caliphate, and it described a legal fight in which the European Court of Human Rights condemned France on September 14, 2022.
The outlet said the European Court of Human Rights obliged France to justify its refusal to repatriate the children by taking their particular vulnerability into account and to provide a remedy procedure against these refusals, and it reported that “One hundred sixty-nine children were able to be repatriated, and 57 women were handed over to judicial authorities on their arrival in France.” In parallel, tv5monde reported that a French delegation visited the Orkesh center in northeastern Syria last week and that attorney Marie Dosé said, “Child soldiers under international law are victims of war,” while Amélie Morineau said Iles told them he believed he was going to come home because that’s what he was told.
Numbers and next steps
RFI said there are currently about fifty women and 110 French children still detained in the Roj camp, while it described the broader situation for French nationals held in Iraq and in northeastern Syria. In RFI’s interview, Matthieu Bagard said that in Iraq there are the 13 French nationals transferred in 2019 whose death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment, and he said they are “therefore currently still held in detention in Baghdad.”
Bagard also described transfers in July 2025, saying “47 of them” were transferred and that “There are 46 men who came from the Derik prison in northeastern Syria,” while he said the latter was forcibly taken by his parents to Syria when he was only 12. Al-Jazeera Net reported that Roj camp, located in the Hasakah governorate region, houses about 2,300 children and women from about 50 countries, and it quoted Syria’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ibrahim Albi, calling the al-Hawl and Roj camps “hellish camps” during a United Nations Security Council session on June 24.