PMore than 150 French children and their mothers are still prisoners in camps in northeastern Syria. France isolated itself more and more and had to, like Germany, Belgium, and so many other countries, make the choice of responsibility and humanity by repatriating all these French children and their mothers. After three and a half years of inertia and procrastination, France has finally abandoned its so-called “case by case” policy of distinguishing between children who deserve to be saved and those who are not.
For years, she made believe that the repatriation operations were far too dangerous to be carried out or that the women were destined to be judged on the spot, which is simply impossible. She tried, when no other European country had dared to go that far, to snatch children from their mothers in the middle of the Syrian desert and bring them back alone to France, more traumatized than ever. Finally, and in particular before the European Court or the Committee on the Rights of the Child, she assured that she had no power over these camps to better explain this choice of the worst. All of this is now a thing of the past. But a past that will weigh heavily on these children who, more or less, all entered the camps when they were under 6 years old. Three, four or five years waiting for France to repatriate them is a whole childhood to repair.
On July 5, 35 French children and 16 mothers, prisoners in Syria for more than three years, were repatriated. All the children were entrusted to the Childhood Social Assistance and placed in foster families until they were reunited with their respective families. All the women were charged and imprisoned. Little Fouad, who entered the camp at the age of 2, is 6 today. Her favorite game, in France, is to open and close doors, and her first gesture was to draw a beautiful colorful landscape given to her imprisoned mother a few days after her arrival. Little Leïla had been separated from her two older brothers in January 2021. Sylvie, their mother, had indeed agreed to let her children go to France without her; but Leïla, the youngest, had clung so tightly to Sylvie, screaming that she had to be left there. Both returned on July 5, and the little girl was immediately able to join her two brothers in their foster family. Sylvie, she cried with joy in her cell in front of the photo of her three children together.
Victims to treat
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