Syria camp an 'open air prison' for children, MSF says

A report by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders on Monday denounced the conditions in the notorious al-Hol refugee camp as catastrophic, particularly for children. 

The study, based on the accounts of patients,said people in the camp "continue to be held in prison-like conditions with very limited access to basic services."

Some 50,000 people live in the overcrowded camp, with children making up 64% of the total — half of whom are younger than 12.

What does the report say? 

The aid organization, also known as Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), noted that the camp had been designed to provide safe, temporary accommodation and humanitarian services to civilians displaced by the conflict in Syria and Iraq. 

The camp's inhabitants were moved there from "Islamic State" (IS) group-controlled territories in December 2018, after the fall of the self-declared "caliphate." Most are either women, including the wives of jihadi fighters, or their children.

However, MSF said the "nature and purpose of al-Hol has long deviated and grown increasingly into an unsafe and unsanitary open-air prison."

The report criticized the lack of protection from violence, lawlessness and the desperate humanitarian situation of people living there.

It said that parents and caregivers have expressed deep concern for the well-being of the children and their psychosocial development.

"Al-Hol is effectively a massive outdoor prison, and the majority of people there are children, many of whom have been born there, robbed of their childhoods, and condemned to a life exposed to violence,” the report said.

'Between two fires'

MSF warned of the increasing influence of extremist groups within the camp. It also criticized the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who are in charge of the facility, for mismanagement.

"We are between two fires: the security forces and the extremists. It's a kind of prison. There is no freedom here...," the report quoted a camp resident as saying.

MSF also cited al-Hol's lack of health care and incidents of violence and warned of the dangerous situation facing children.

"We have seen and heard many tragic stories," the aid agency's Syria operations manager, Martine Flokstra, said.

Some youngsters died "as a result of prolonged delays in accessing urgent medical care." Flokstra also highlighted repeated accounts of "young boys reportedly forcibly removed from their mothers once they reach around 11 years old, never to be seen again."

France recently repatriated a large number of women and children from camps in northern Syria, as did the Netherlands.

rc/wd (AP, AFP, dpa)