disappeared without warning, and the psychological impact of there being no prospect that detention will be brought to an end. International legal bodies have, in other contexts, such as longstanding domestic violence, identified the cumulative psychological effects of physical mistreatment, threats, and the absence of escape as potentially satisfying the high threshold for classification as torture.105 For treatment to constitute torture, it must also have a purposive element, which can be satisfied where the treatment is meted out to individuals as a form of punishment or intimidation,106 or targeted at women and thus a form of discrimination.107 And it is well-established that, while the definition of torture at international law requires some form of link to public officials rather than purely private violence,108 the actions or omissions of non-State forces with regional de facto control can satisfy the definition.109 Further, there is a real argument that the extremity of the situation in the camps may qualify as torture under international law, given that physical violence is accompanied by inadequate basic living conditions, illness, the permanent fear for mothers of their male children being disappeared without warning, and the psychological impact of there being no prospect that detention will be brought to an end. 112. It is no answer to the charge of torture that the extreme risks and trauma to which women and children in the al Hol and Roj camps are subject are as much a product of the environment as of specific SDF actions. The UN Committee Against Torture has emphasized that, where authorities know or have reason to believe that severe harm is being suffered by individuals, those officials ‘should be considered as authors, complicit or otherwise, responsible under [international law] for consenting to or acquiescing in such impermissible acts.’110 The failure of the SDF to prevent widespread physical violence, mental strain, and illness in the camps, to which the SDF’s positive actions of forcible removal of children and indefinite unlawful detention add a further layer of trauma, raises a prima facie charge of torture committed to punish these women and children for their prior links to ISIL. Such a fundamental breach of international law demands a response from those States within the international community capable of affecting the situation on the ground for at least that subset of the detainees which constitute their own nationals. 113. States are not entitled simply to sit by while such fundamental breaches of international law unfold. As set out in detail above, it appears that the arrangements both at the diplomatic level and on the ground mean that European states have a direct capacity to influence the SDF and the AANES authorities, and the direct means to bring the unlawful and intolerable detention of their nationals currently held in the al Hol and Roj camps to an end. European States can do so through consenting to repatriation of these women and children so that they can be dealt with according to law and in acceptable conditions at home. By refusing to request repatriation European States are failing in their basic duty of not to recognize or maintain a situation which constitutes a serious breach of international law. 42 RIGHTS & SECURITY INTERNATIONAL