56. For some orphans in the camps, being taken into the care of detainee women holds additional risks. A French woman in the Roj camp told RSI, ‘I know about a German orphan and a French orphan. Women take care of them. They hide them and pretend they are their own child.’ ‘Some women hide them because they don’t want the children to be repatriated [to Europe] because of religion. They think it’s better if they stay there. Children are camouflaged and we don’t know where the tents are where they are hidden. Young girls wear a niqab and boys are sometimes dressed as girls,’ a French woman living in the al Hol Annex said. ‘They are women who took these children when their mothers died in [Al Baghuz Fawqani]. Nobody will be able to convince these women to let the orphans go.’ SDF authorities told RSI that they suspect that the goal of some of these women is to foster the next generation of the ISIL caliphate.46 57. Even where orphans are safely monitored, identifying them, confirming their nationality, and connecting them with relatives presents enormous challenges. UNICEF considers that a number of the unaccompanied children in the custody of Iraqi and Syrian women in the al Hol camp may be from a variety of other unknown nationalities.47 These children are at risk of permanently being lost to their birth families in their country of nationality if the women in whose custody they currently reside are returned to Iraq or Syria. RSI spoke to the legal representatives of a German family who recognized their two-yearold German grandchild in a newspaper photograph. He was in the custody of a Syrian woman in the al Hol camp, and during the time it took for inquiries and arrangements to be made for reuniting the child with his family in Germany, camp officials lost track of the Syrian women and the infant. ‘No one knows where he is now. We have had no information since June,’ the legal representative said. ‘Maybe there are more [German] orphans in camps. It’s possible.’ RSI has been told there are indeed German, Dutch, and Belgian orphans in the same position – in the custody of Syrian and Iraqi women in the al Hol camp, with no certainty as to when, or if, they will ever be transferred to the care of their relatives in their countries of nationality. The SDF routinely disappears boys from 12 years of age, taking them to unknown locations and holding them without contact with their mothers. Typically, these removals take place in the middle of the night, and involve multiple children at once. 58. A particular risk for children in the camps is the forced removal of young boys as they grow older. The SDF routinely disappears boys from 12 years of age, taking them to unknown locations and holding them without contact with their mothers. Typically, these removals take place in the middle of the night, and involve multiple children at once. Reports corroborating these removals came from mothers themselves who had lost their sons and from neighbours who witnessed the removals. There have been several waves of removals: in August/September 2019 when 15 boys from 14 years and older were taken from the al Hol camp; in October 2019 in the Roj camp; and in January 2020 from the al Hol Annex, when approximately 30 teenaged boys from various nationalities were forcibly abducted. 24 RIGHTS & SECURITY INTERNATIONAL