Madeline-Sophie Abbas (Lancaster University)
Background: Al-Hol camp
The abrupt and uncoordinated closure of al-Hol camp on 22 February 2026 has reignited debates concerning the repatriation of those who travelled to Islamic State territory hoping to be returned to their country of origin. After the fall of Baghouz and the demise of ISIS in 2019, thousands of women and children, who were assumed to be associated with ISIS, were detained in two open-air camps, al-Hol and Roj. These camps were controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led military alliance which controlled large areas of northern and eastern Syria, supported by a US-led coalition.
Foreign nationals, meaning non-Syrian or Iraqi, have been treated as a ‘distinct and highly securitised population’ due to their perceived links with ISIS. They occupied a separate annex to the main camp. However, rights organisations such as Amnesty International have documented the trafficking of foreign nationals, including Britons. These women are worried for their children’s safety. Amnesty reports that most children are younger than 12.
Following a government offensive, the Syrian government took over authority of al-Hol camp. The SDF was forced to withdraw on 21 January 2026. But chaos ensued. At its height, al-Hol, the largest of the two camps, held over 76,000 people. Population estimates were 23,000 in January 2026 but dropped sharply during the transition. Human rights and security concerns have been raised amid reports of ‘ISIS-linked’ families escaping and smugglers transporting foreigners to unverified locations. Humanitarian organisations were forced to suspend operations due to violence, subjecting thousands, including children, to healthcare risks and safety concerns. A further human rights concern relates to US efforts to transfer suspected ISIS fighters from NES prisons to Iraq. These may include boys or young men. Amnesty have reported systematic separation of foreign national boys from their parents or guardians in detention camps, including al-Hol, from as young as 11 or 12 and transferring them to detention facilities. British nationals could be among those being transferred to be prosecuted under Iraqi law who risk torture and execution. The remaining families in al-Hol camp have been relocated to Akhtarin camp in northwest Syria. But the question of repatriation of foreign nationals who continue to be indefinitely detained in camps without charge looms large.
This blog post explores human rights, legal and security concerns relating to the question of returning UK-linked individuals to the UK at a time when the UK is expanding its powers of citizenship deprivation. I use the term ‘UK-linked’ to account for different citizenship statuses. These include British citizens who may have been deprived of their citizenship on national security grounds and children born to UK citizens or former UK citizen parents. These children may not have lived in the UK or have appropriate documentation and consequently ‘may not be formally recognised as British citizens’. As context, the blog gives a brief overview of legislative developments within increasingly converging immigration and counter-terrorism regimes, which have enabled citizenship deprivation to be used as a counter-terrorism measure. Concomitantly, the UK government has failed to put forward a coherent repatriation policy to support the return of UK-linked individuals/their families. But, as I show, failure to repatriate does not make the UK safer, nor does it meet international human rights requirements or the rule of law.
The use of citizenship deprivation as counter-terrorism measures
Macklin argues that ‘After decades in exile, banishment is back.’ Expansion of laws allowing citizenship deprivation in the UK, as well as Canada, Australia and the Netherlands, have important implications for citizenship rights, the rule of law and democracy. Banishment operates at the threshold of extra/legal, un/civilised practices that undermine modern law and claims to civility of western states. These states have the means to rehabilitate and reintegrate individuals, but have failed to provide a comprehensive repatriation policy. There are two concerning characteristics of the UK’s use of citizenship deprivation. Firstly, the shift from a punitive model to a pre-emptive risk model bypasses the criminal process. Secondly, the UK’s use of citizenship deprivation is ‘the broadest’ among Western countries.[i] The Home Secretary has discretionary powers to “determine personally whether a person’s actions are such that it is in the public interest that they are no longer a British citizen.” Decisions are not subject to review, allowing scope for prejudice and mistakes to be made in the absence of a fair trial or judicial review.
In 2017 alone, 104 British citizens were deprived of their citizenship under section 40(2) of the British Nationality Act 1981 on ‘conducive to the public good’ grounds. Although deprivation powers date back to 1914 in English law, they were rarely applied. It’s unprecedented use in response to ‘Islamist’[ii]-related terrorism illustrates racialised hierarchies of belonging within citizenship law that enable citizenship to be deprived for dual heritage citizens due to claims, as with the infamous Shamima Begum case, that they can access citizenship elsewhere. Rather than providing universal rights, citizenship is a (racialised) ‘privilege not a right’. There is a marked lack of transparency from the UK government concerning demographic profiles of those who have been deprived of their UK citizenship. But those affected are predominantly thought to be Muslim males with South Asian, Middle Eastern or North African heritage.
The Home Secretary is given discretionary power to issue citizenship deprivation orders without requiring judicial approval. Right to a fair trial is enshrined in Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). Failure to meet this requirement suggests it is not the act per se, but the category of person that is judged unworthy of penal inclusion and protections afforded to subjects. Expansion of how the category of ‘terrorist’ is applied provides further legitimation to depriving citizenship rather than repatriation.
Legal questions – what constitutes ‘terrorist’?
When judging what people held in detention facilities in Syria are accused of, it is important to note two key developments concerning counter-terrorism action in the post-9/11 context. Firstly, the broadening scope of ‘terrorist’ offences. There is currently no universal legal definition in international law of what constitutes a ‘terrorist’ that has been approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations. Secondly, designating individuals as terrorists enables legal process to be breached on national security grounds. Al-Hol camp is a significant example in this regard. Thousands of foreign nationals have been detained because of their (unproven) association with ISIS without a criminal trial. Expansion to what constitutes ‘terrorist’ enables citizenship to be deprived based on inchoate behaviours, motivations or evidence without requiring criminal sentencing.
Foreign fighters and the issue of return to their home countries is not a new phenomenon. One example is the Mujahideen who travelled to support Muslim populations in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union invasion during the 1980s, including from the UK. However, Foreign Terrorist Fighter (FTF) is a relatively recent classification introduced by the UN Security Council Resolution 218 in 2014. Hard-lined security responses are legitimised, including citizenship deprivation.
FTF is a contested term, but is defined by the UN Security Council resolution 2178 as ‘individuals who travel to a State other than their State of residence or nationality for the purpose of the perpetration, planning, or preparation of, or participation in, terrorist acts or the providing or receiving of terrorist training, including in connection with armed conflict.’ However, what constitutes ‘terrorist acts’ is not defined and effectively criminalises a broad range of behaviours that may not include violence. The FTF classification often problematically includes women and children. This is not to claim women are incapable of perpetrating terrorist violence, which has been widely debated and is beyond the scope of this blog, but rather to critique the failure to distinguish between those proven to have engaged in fighting (both males and females), which detrimentally impacts their ability to be repatriated.
Importantly, prohibitions have been introduced on entering or transiting ISIS-controlled territory. This means that merely being in ISIS-controlled territory is equated with aligning with a terrorist organisation and has been used as sufficient grounds for citizenship deprivation. But this development fails to acknowledge trafficking and accompanying human rights considerations.
‘The right to have rights’ – Human rights concerns
War Child reports that most of the British women in al-Hol are trafficking victims; around half were under 18 when they left the UK. These women should be treated as victims of recruitment by an armed group which violates international law. Young men may also have been trafficked when they were children, but are not recognised as trafficking victims. Amnesty corroborates that mechanisms have not been introduced to conduct human rights assessments of nationals or identify trafficking victims. This means that women, children and young men may be punished for actions due to being trafficked. They are not treated as worthy of UK state protection.
Arendt famously decreed in the Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) that citizenship is the ‘right to have rights’ which should be unconditional and incontrovertible. But accessing citizenship rights depends on ‘territorial presence’. Failure to repatriate individuals comprises a ‘political death’ or ‘civil death’ and potential precursor to actual death. For example, Bilal al-Berjawi, a British-Lebanese citizen who arrived in the UK as a baby and British-born Mohamed Sakr, a dual British-Egyptian national, were killed by US drone strikes in Somalia after being stripped of their British citizenship in 2010.
The counter-terrorism context problematises who is counted as a citizen to be protected and whose exclusion can be legitimised on national security grounds. But this does not mean that failure to repatriate is beneficial to the security of UK-based citizens.
Security implications
Evidence given by national security experts, Mr Barrett, former Director of Counter-terrorism at MI6, and Mr Jordan in the Report of the Inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Trafficked Britons in Syria, published back in 2022, had warned of a ‘mass break-out’ from camps and prisons, which has since come to pass.
Failure for states to repatriate citizens has long been criticised by security experts for stretching the capacity of Kurdish officials to manage detention facilities. Leaving individuals in limbo raises security issues from loss of jurisdiction, which may place them at greater risk of exploitation by terrorist adherents. Importantly, NGOs have also used security logics to advocate for repatriation, citing volatile camp spaces as risky to UK-based citizens. Security experts have also noted human rights violations. Richard Barrett, former Director of CT at MI6, corroborates UN officials and human rights monitors’ critique of the UK’s failure to find ‘legal and safe means to repatriate’ UK nationals. Rather than support repatriation, the UK has bolstered the expansion of detention facilities through UK public funds, which have unlawfully held individuals without charge or a criminal trial.
The fate of UK-linked individuals in Syria remains uncertain. Roj camp, only 25 miles from al-Hol, remains under SDF control but is soon to be closed. Rights organisation, Reprieve, reports that some 30 British children and 15 British women are ‘illegally detained’ in Roj, accused of IS membership. We do not know what their future holds. But we do know that failure to repatriate and the use of citizenship deprivation leave families at risk.
What next?
To date, the UK government has failed to take a proactive or coherent approach to identifying and repatriating UK-linked individuals or even assessing the alleged security risk that they pose. UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights observe that ‘There is no official public data from the Government on the number of British individuals currently detained in camps and prisons in North East Syria (NES).’ This means that the question of repatriation is not subject to public scrutiny. The UK has so far only focused on repatriating unaccompanied or orphaned children. Repatriation is further complicated where parents have been deprived of their citizenship. But as War Child argue, this approach reinforces ‘unlawful distinctions’ between ‘CAAFAG (Children Associated with Armed Forces and Armed Groups) perceived as victims in need of protection, and CAAFAG who are regarded as threats to security and/or treated as criminals’. There is a gap, observed by Arai-Takahashi, when it comes to regulating the repatriation of foreign individuals linked to armed groups like ISIS. Instead, the UK government has extended citizenship deprivation powers. For example, the introduction of the Deprivation of Citizenship Orders Act 2025 means citizenship status cannot be reinstated until the UK government has exhausted all prospects for challenging appeals. In January this year, the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, squashed the European Court of Human Rights’ scrutiny of the Begum case, stating she would ‘robustly defend the decision to revoke Shamima Begum’s citizenship’ according to a government source.
The UK has the social care and criminal justice infrastructure to support repatriation. What is needed is a proactive, comprehensive, rights-centred approach that enables UK-linked individuals to be recognised as citizens worthy of protection.
[i] 148 recorded UK cases 2014-2018 compared to Belgium (10), France (6), Netherlands (3)
[ii] Alistair Gent, Chair of the National Association of Muslim Police (NAMP) has called for the Home Office and police service to stop using the term ‘Islamist’ because it associates Islam with terrorism.