European States’ Obligations to Repatriate the Children Detained in Camps in Northeast Syria Committee (“HRComm”), has found that States have jurisdiction over their nationals living abroad in relation to the State’s exercise of the power to issue passports.119 The consistent trend in the abovementioned cases is for courts to examine the extent of a State’s control over particular rights, noting that a State may have jurisdiction over some of a person’s rights while not having jurisdiction over others.120 According to two UN Special Rapporteurs, the assessment of whether States exert de facto control over the rights of the children in the camps must take into consideration factors such as: (1) the proximity between the acts of the State and the alleged violation; (2) the degree and extent of cooperation, engagement, and communications with the authorities detaining children and their guardians; (3) the extent to which the home State is able to put an end to the violation of the individual’s rights by exercising or refusing any positive interventions to protect and promote the rights of their nationals; and (4) the extent to which another State or nonstate actor has control over the rights. 121 There are, as such, multiple ways in which it can be argued that European States have jurisdiction over their child nationals in the camps, by exercising control over their rights. First, some States have a presence in the camps through their diplomatic, military, and intelligence personnel and have a degree of control over their nationals there. 122 As two UN Special Rapporteurs have stressed, while this occurs outside of formal recognition of the status of the authorities managing the camps, this engagement signals “a degree and substance of capacity and influence on the lives of those under their control which ought not to be ignored.”123 Notably, the ECtHR, in order Obligations Regarding the Human Rights of Children in the Context of International Migration in Countries of Origin, Transit, Destination and Return,” CMW/C/GC/4-CRC/C/GC/23, 16 November 2017, para. 17(e) and 19, cited in: CommRC, “L.H. et al v. France,” Communications no. 79/2019 and no. 109/2019, CRC/C/85/D/79/2019-CRC/C/85/D/109/2019, 2 November 2020, para. 9.6. 119 HRComm, “Vidal Martins v. Uruguay,” Communication No. 57/1979, 23 March 1982, para. 7. 120 ECHR rights can be “divided and tailored,” see: ECtHR, “Al-Skeini and others v. United Kingdom,” para. 137. 121 The Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism and the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, “Extra-territorial Jurisdiction of States Over Children and Their Guardians in Camps, Prisons, or Elsewhere in the Northeast Syrian Arab Republic – Legal Analysis,” 2020, para. 36. 122 RSI, “Europe’s Guantanamo: The Indefinite Detention of European Women and Children in North East Syria,” 2020, p. 5. 123 The Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism and the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, “Extra-territorial Jurisdiction of States Over Children and Their Guardians in Camps, Prisons, or Elsewhere in the Northeast Syrian Arab Republic – Legal Analysis,” 2020, para. 21; RSI, “Europe’s Guantanamo: The Indefinite Detention of European Women and Children in North East Syria,” 2020, para. 84. 24