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UD’s Buddy Peter Says What UD’s Been Saying for Some Time on This Blog: Separate ISIS children from their mothers, and give them a chance at life, while decreasing the risk to the rest of us.

In yesterday’s New York Times:

The Kurdish authorities, with the blessing and financial support of the United States and its coalition partners, should remove the children from the prison camps. That’s the only way to give them a better shot at life and eventually making it back home.

This might sound harsh — removing children from their mothers, who would ostensibly not have a say in the decision. Some argue it’s a violation of rights. But the status quo — leaving them in miserable conditions to grow up radicalized — is worse for the children and the rest of us…

While some countries, as mentioned, have taken in women and children, most of these mothers are doomed, unlikely ever to be repatriated. The children need not share their fate — most are still too young to have been indoctrinated…

Forced separation in some cases “layers trauma on top of acute trauma,” according to the United Nations. While a few mothers may welcome the idea of their children having the opportunity to live a life outside of prison, most would undoubtedly resist losing them.

And this would certainly be cruel and painful for the children. But I believe it is even more cruel to condemn a child to a life in prison because a parent made the decision to go to Syria to join a terrorist organization…

This is not an argument I make lightly. There are sure to be objections from human rights and humanitarian organizations who condemn separations as harmful and insist that the solution is for governments to repatriate all their citizens — but we know that this largely will not happen.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will — unless separation is deemed to be in the best interest of the child.

It’s clearly not in any child’s best interest to be surrounded by terrorist ideology or face a lifetime in prison, having committed no crime.

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Margaret Soltan, February 7, 2022 11:46AM
Posted in: heroes

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