The children (and wives) of foreign ISIS fighters 89 ligation, the Belgian Government reiterated its commitments to differentiate between the mothers and the children, allowing the latter to enter the country, without, however, admitting responsibility for facilitating and seeking their return.102 The Belgian lower court’s decision, although swiftly reversed, still represents an important milestone and it could act as a wake up call for other national courts across Europe. 3.4. International human rights law The widespread set of human rights violations to which foreign women and children are currently exposed in Iraqi prisons as well as in the SDF camps triggers additional and important questions concerning the application of human rights treaties beyond national borders. If, on the one hand, it is true that the States of nationality are not directly responsible for the breaches suffered by their citizens, on the other hand it is undeniable that the extraterritorial reach of human rights treaties is no longer disputed,103 although the extent to which States parties owe their human rights obligations abroad remains uncertain.104 With regard to the situation of women and children in Iraq, it is worth underscoring 102 Notably, Belgium is amongst the European States resorting to DNA test to determine if children of FTFs have a legitimate claim to Belgian citizenship. More in detail ‘[f]or the children born in the Levant from a Belgian mother, citizenship should be granted automatically if the DNA tests are positive. But for those born of a Belgian father, positive DNA results will be insufficient if the marriage was not recognized by the Belgian administration (which is the case for religious unions celebrated under the caliphate), or if the father did not officially recognize the child.’ See Renard and Coolsaet, ‘Children in the Levant’ (n 35) 5; see also EPRS, ‘The Return of Foreign Fighters’ (n 21) 49. 103 T Meron, ‘Extraterritoriality of Human Rights Treaties’ (1995) 89 AJIL 78; Y Shany, O Ben-Naftali, ‘Living in Denial: The Application of Human Rights in the Occupied Territories’ (2003–4) 37 Israel L Rev 17; M Milanovic, Extraterritorial Application of Human Rights Treaties: Law, Principles, and Policy (OUP 2011); S Besson, ‘The Extraterritoriality of the European Convention on Human Rights: Why Human Rights Depend on Jurisdiction and What Jurisdiction Amounts to’ (2012) 25 Leiden J Intl L 857, 862-868; S Kim, ‘Non-Refoulement and Extraterritorial Jurisdiction: State Sovereignty and Migration Controls at Sea in the European Context’ (2017) 30 Leiden J Intl L 49, 53-61. 104 H King, ‘The Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations of States’ (2009) 9 Human Rights L Rev 521, 522-524; A Orakhelashvili, ‘Restrictive Interpretation of Human Rights Treaties in the Recent Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights’ (2003) 14 European J Intl L 529, 538-541; R Wilde, ‘Triggering State Obligations Extraterritorially: The Spatial Test in Certain Human Rights Treaties’ (2007) 40 Israel L Rev 503.