NORDIC JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS 2020, VOL. 38, NO. 2, 141–158 https://doi.org/10.1080/18918131.2020.1792090 Children Trapped in Camps in Syria, Iraq and Turkey: Reflections on Jurisdiction and State Obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child Chrisje Sandelowsky-Bosman a and Ton Liefaard b a Department of Child Law, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands; bDepartment of Child Law, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands ABSTRACT KEYWORDS A significant number of children with ties to the jurisdiction of the Netherlands through their Dutch nationality or for other reasons, are currently trapped in camps in Syria, Turkey and Iraq, often under poor or life-threatening conditions. Like many other governments, the Netherlands Government is not actively engaged in returning these children to the Netherlands. This article asks whether these children fall within the jurisdiction of the Netherlands pursuant to Article 2(1) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and if so, whether the Netherlands Government is discharged from the relevant obligations that flow from this convention to protect these children. It sets out arguments in favour of a more extensive interpretation of the concept of jurisdiction than currently adhered to by governments and courts. Based on these arguments, it can be argued that the children fall within Dutch jurisdiction and that the Dutch Government is under the obligation to adequately protect their rights as laid down in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; jurisdiction; nationality; right to return; right to life; children’s rights 1. Introduction The Netherlands Government is not actively engaged in returning children with ties to the Netherlands1 who are located in refugee camps in Syria, Turkey and Iraq,2 to the Netherlands.3 According to the Minister for Legal Protection, children who are Dutch nationals CONTACT Ton Liefaard t.liefaard@law.leidenuniv.nl and Chrisje Sandelowsky-Bosman c.m.sandelowsky@law. leidenuniv.nl 1 See Section 2 for an elaboration of what is meant by ‘ties to the Netherlands’. For the sake of convenience, further reference will be made to ‘returning’ children, which includes those children that would be brought to the Netherlands for the first time since they were born outside Dutch territory. 2 Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst (AIVD), ‘Uitreizigers en terugkeerders. Hoeveel Nederlanders zijn uitgereisd naar een jihadistisch strijdgebied?’ <www.aivd.nl/onderwerpen/terrorisme/dreiging/uitreizigers-en-terugkeerders> accessed 14 May 2020; the Nationaal Coördinator Terrorismebestrijding en Veiligheid (NCTV), ‘Veiligheidsimplicaties wel of niet terughalen van uitreizigers en minderjarige kinderen’; attachment to Parliamentary Paper, Letter from the Dutch Minister of Justice and Security to the Speaker of the Dutch House of Representatives (6 December 2018) in which the NCTV noted that there are children with a link to the Netherlands in Iraq. 3 With the exception of two Dutch orphans who were brought to the Netherlands, see letter from the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Justice and Security to the Speaker of the Dutch House of Representatives (10 © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.