to around 110 detainees. It is not clear whether all removed children have been housed in the Houry centre, or whether some have been sent to adult male prison facilities, as the New York Times and Le Monde has reported is common in North East Syria.48 Despite repeated requests, RSI was not granted access to the Houry centre or any other juvenile detention centre or prison run by the AANES administration while on the ground in North East Syria. A subsequent invitation has been impossible take up due to Covid-19 travel restrictions. Sanitation, Health, and Basic Living Conditions 62. From the point of view of sanitation, basic living amenities, and healthcare, the North East Syrian camps also fall far below acceptable minimum standards, and accordingly appear to violate basic human rights to water, food, health, and humane treatment. 63. Harsh winter weather, stifling summers, heavy rain, flooding, sandstorms, and a lack of dependable drinking water supplies make the basic conditions of life in the detention camps especially harsh, while aid and other humanitarian services are limited. Access to water is meant to be by way of collection from large plastic tanks filled daily with water delivered by truck. But according to detainees and humanitarian staff with access to the camps, water is often unclean and the camps lack sanitation facilities. ‘We had to queue at 5am to get salty water with mould and worms in it. The ones who have no money have no drinking water,’ a Belgian woman said. A French woman in the al Hol camp told RSI: ‘When we wake up, we go and fill our container from the main tank. We do it early before there is no more water left because there is limited water for the whole camp. Usually, tanks are empty by midday or, at the latest, by 5pm. During the summer it’s worse. The water we drink is not clean. Not everyone has financial means to buy bottled water. There is another type of water available sometimes, but it’s not drinkable. It’s salty water that we use to wash clothes.’ Staff from the Kurdish Red Crescent attest that the water is not clean enough to clean the hospital’s floor. 64. Staff from the Kurdish Red Crescent attest that the water is not clean enough to clean the hospital’s floor.49 The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (‘OCHA’) in January 2019 had reported that water quality in the al Hol camp had improved, based on water testing,50 but the women who spoke with RSI in early 2020 had noticed no improvement. 65. For most of 2020, the camp water supply has been under particular strain given Turkey’s disruption of water supplies into the AANES. The UN OCHA reported in July 2020 that, in the first six months of the year, flows from the Alouk water station were disrupted on average once a fortnight. The Alouk water station provides 50% of the water supply to the al Hol camp. The intermittent supply has interfered profoundly with water access in the camp.51 26 RIGHTS & SECURITY INTERNATIONAL