We saw the bodies of the babies’. By early 2020, at least nine European children below the age of three had died in the camps, and by 10 August 2020 the death rate of all children in al Hol camp had tripled, with eight children under five dying in five days between 6 and 10 August 2020. Rights and Security International (‘RSI’) also documented instances of severe abuse and violence in the detention camps. This ranges from camp guards opening fire on women and forcibly removing male children at night, to fights between detainees in crowded facilities where tensions are high and women who retain ISIL loyalties victimise others in a lawless environment. Children are subject to sexual abuse, and unaccompanied minors are abducted. One European mother of a three-year-old boy living in the al Hol Annex spoke to RSI about her son’s assault. ‘A boy sexually assaulted my son last year. It happened outside during the day. He was approximately 12 years old. My son pointed him [out] to me,’ the mother said. Women are placed in internal ‘gaols’ including in solitary confinement for months at a time for alleged involvement in unrest or for having possession of a mobile phone. At times children are placed in confinement with their mothers and at other times children are left alone in the camp to fend for themselves. RSI recorded at least ten cases of Belgian, French, and German women being confined within the al Hol Annex, and in six instances children were detained alongside their mothers. A French woman told RSI of ‘a Belgian woman who was in solitary confinement for a month with her five-year old daughter. They were in a room of the same size as toilets, in the dark.’ There is minimal education or any form of stimulation for the children, and the camps lack any infrastructure to deal with the psycho-social impact of detention and post-traumatic stress. One European woman described the trauma exhibited by a three-year-old whose mother had died, “He doesn’t make eye contact. He sits in a corner with his back towards us. In the night I sometimes wake up and he is awake, sitting and biting his hands and knuckles until bleeding. He beats and bites himself. He wakes up at night screaming. He takes faeces from his diaper – he still uses a diaper at three-and-a-half-yearold- and put it on the walls.”    The AANES, Europe’s ally against ISIL in North East Syria, has pressed European States to take back these women and children as the AANES does not have the infrastructure or capacity to indefinitely detain or prosecute them. But European States have refused to do so in any significant numbers. They consider that the possible security threat posed by these women and children is best managed outside of their countries and in this instance by the AANES and SDF in the detention camps in North East Syria. Accordingly, they have adopted a policy of consigning these detainees to indefinite unlawful detention in North East Syria rather than bringing them home to face justice and be dealt with properly according to law and in lawful conditions. Indeed, a number of the States which are the subject of this report have applied existing legislation in their countries to withdraw the citizenship of detainees in absentia creating further obstacles to repatriation and placing these women and children further outside the protection of the law. 4 RIGHTS & SECURITY INTERNATIONAL