European States’ Obligations to Repatriate the Children Detained in Camps in Northeast Syria provide protection against unlawful interference with the right to liberty and security to everyone within their jurisdiction of which authorities have or ought to have knowledge of, 423 especially vulnerable persons. The ECtHR has previously ruled that an authority’s failure to put an end to arbitrary deprivation of liberty when it had the means to do so constituted a breach of the State’s positive obligation to protect the right to liberty and security. 424 Although children in the camps have had different experiences and roles growing up in the custody of ISIS-affiliated members, they are collectively punished by being detained in the camps. Despite being minors, who should be treated primarily as victims, they are treated as criminals and have been detained for a long and undetermined period of time, without the benefit of key safeguards, such as the presumption of innocence and the possibility of appealing their de facto detention, and having no prospect in sight for release.425 This amounts to collective and arbitrary deprivation of liberty, in a place with inhumane living conditions, where they face death, violence, and other abuses. According to the HRComm, detaining family members of an alleged criminal, who are not themselves accused of any wrongdoing, is an egregious example of arbitrary detention. 426 Furthermore, security detention that is not in contemplation of prosecution on a criminal charge presents severe risks of arbitrary deprivation of liberty when other effective measures addressing the threat are available. 427 The detention of children in the camps is in violation of international human rights law not only because their restriction of liberty is disproportionate, indefinite, and potentially discriminatory (see Section I.A. above), but also because effective alternatives to their detention, which could address national security concerns, are available, including States’ repatriation, rehabilitation, and reintegration of the children from the camps. 423 ECtHR, “El-Masri v. the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,” Application No. 39630/09, 13 December 2012, para. 239; ECtHR, “Storck v. Germany,” Application No. 61603/00, 16 September 2005, para. 102. 424 ECtHR, “Medova v. Russia,” Application No. 25385/04, 5 June 2009, para. 124. 425 See: RSI, “Europe’s Guantanamo: The Indefinite Detention of European Women and Children in North East Syria,” 2020, para. 27. For a discussion on the detention conundrum regarding States’ reliance on non-state actors for counterterrorism operations and their simultaneous reluctance to accept the return of terrorists captured and detained by non-state actors in the course of those operations, see Dan E. Stigall, “The Syrian Detention Conundrum: International and Comparative Legal Complexities,” Harvard National Security Journal, Volume 11, Issue 1, 2020, pp. 54-105. 426 HRComm, “General Comment No. 35 on Article 9,” para. 16. 427 Ibid, para. 15. 73