Let Gravely Ill Canadians Leave Northeast Syria in Canada

Canada

is effectively preventing a Canadian woman and a young Canadian child detained in northeast Syria from coming home for life-saving medical care despite a Canadian policy allowing them to do so, Human Rights Watch said today. That policy allows Canada to repatriate nationals held in northeast Syria as Islamic State (ISIS) suspects and family members if they have potentially fatal medical conditions that cannot be treated in the camps and prisons where they are held.

A former US ambassador who has taken several foreigners out of northeast Syria on behalf of their home countries told Human Rights Watch that in days of exchanges ending on February 15, 2022, Canadian authorities refused his offer to escort the woman and child to a Canadian consulate in neighboring Iraq. The families of the two Canadians, who are not related, have repeatedly implored government authorities to repatriate the woman and child and have sent them medical records attesting to their need for life-saving care.

“How close to death do Canadians have to be for their government to decide they qualify for repatriation?” said Letta Tayler, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. “Canada should be helping its citizens unlawfully held in northeast Syria, not obstructing their ability to get life-saving health care.”

The two detainees are among an estimated four dozen Canadians who have been held for three or more years as ISIS suspects and family members in life-threatening, deeply degrading, and often inhumane conditions in northeast Syria. None have been brought before a judicial authority to determine the necessity and legality of their detention, as required under international law. More than half of the Canadians are children, most under age 7.

The Kurdish-led authorities in northeast Syria detaining the Canadians and other foreigners have repeatedly urged home countries to repatriate their nationals. Canada has only allowed three of the detained nationals to come home, a 5-year-old orphaned girl in 2020, a 4-year-old girl in March 2021 and, eight months later, the second girl’s mother, whom it only provided emergency travel documents after a lawyer took the case to court. Canada has said that repatriating its nationals could pose a security risk and that it is too dangerous for its diplomats to travel inside war-torn northeast Syria to extract them.

However, the government has said that if Canadians reach a consulate, it will assist them, including if they request repatriation. In addition, Global Affairs Canada, the foreign ministry, adopted a policy framework in January 2021 that allows Canada to “consider” repatriations of its nationals held in northeast Syria on a case-by-case basis under certain conditions. The government never publicly announced the policy framework, called the “Government of Canada Policy Framework to Evaluate the Provision of Extraordinary Assistance: Consular Cases in North-Eastern Syria.” But it filed it in court papers in January 2022 in response to a case brought by the families of 26 Canadian detainees seeking to compel Canada to repatriate their relatives.

The conditions are highly restrictive but “could include” an “imminent, life-threatening medical condition, with no prospect of receiving medical treatment [on site],” says a copy of the policy framework reviewed by Human Rights Watch. A guiding principle of this policy was that “Canadian government officials must not be put in harm’s way.”

Peter Galbraith, the former US ambassador, told Human Rights Watch that while he was in northeast Syria in mid-February, he notified Global Affairs Canada that he was willing to bring out the two gravely ill Canadians, Kimberly Polman