Orphaned and injured, two teenage girls aged 14 and 16 have survived in the camps of Syria since the death of their mother, killed in 2019 in the bombings that drove Daesh from her last stronghold, the city of Baghouz.

Born and educated in France, the girls, of Moroccan nationality, were taken to Syria in 2016, before they were old enough to become French. Their lawyer, Marie Dosé, seized an administrative court to demand their repatriation to France. She answered questions from the Point.

Le Point: What is the situation of these two teenage girls?

Marie Dosé: These are two young girls, now 14 and 16, whose repatriation I have been asking for years. They were both born and raised in France, where they went to school. Their mother, Moroccan, was in a legal situation before taking them and their little brother to Syria in 2016, when they were eight and ten years old. The mother and little brother died in Baghouz in 2019, and the two kids were injured. Orphaned, they were transferred to Al-Hol camp, where French women took care of them, and then arrived at Roj camp, where they are still today.

How are they?

They have been waiting in camps for four years. One hardly speaks anymore, she is completely traumatized, the other is injured in the arm and must be operated on urgently. I communicate with them regularly by WhatsApp, and it’s really a disaster. To tell you, this is the first time that women in camps have written to me directly asking me to do something. The French women who took care of them have been repatriated, and they are even more alone than before. I’m very worried.

These teenagers are in a special situation since they do not have French nationality. Why ask France to repatriate them?

They have only known France: we are not going to make children pay for their parents’ decision to take them to a war zone before they acquire French nationality. They only know France, their entire maternal family lives there, and they have spent more time in Syria alone in camps than in the territories occupied by Daesh with their mother.

I have already obtained the repatriation of several people who did not have French nationality, including a little girl who, like them, had been taken by her parents to a war zone before being able to acquire French nationality, whereas she was born in France.

It is clear, moreover, that Morocco will never repatriate them: on the one hand, this country does not know them, and on the other hand, Morocco has not repatriated any Moroccan woman or Moroccan child, not even a orphan, from camps in northeastern Syria. This country is not interested in its nationals and even less in these two kids who, moreover, do not know Morocco. They only know France, and moreover had a circulation document there.

What do you expect from the administrative seizure you made last week?

I’m waiting for them to come back, I can’t imagine that their repatriation doesn’t happen very soon. It is up to the Élysée to decide. To date, France does not respect the condemnation judgment of the European Court of Human Rights. There is a need to put an end to the arbitrariness of decisions refusing repatriation. The European Court invites France to have these requests examined by a body which does not come under the executive power. However, it is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that takes care of it, and it reports to the executive. The ECHR also invites France to justify these decisions by taking into consideration the best interests of the child, his particular situation and his vulnerability, and these criteria are never mentioned. France never even answered me about these little girls. Again, the judgment of condemnation is not respected.

How many children are left to repatriate?

There are still a hundred children to be repatriated. A very small part is in Al-Hol, where it will be very difficult to find them, but the vast majority is in the Roj camp. Most have French nationality, because one of their parents is French, but some are in the same situation as these two children. These two kids, on the other hand, have the particularity of being orphans. They are all alone, what does it cost France to help them, when they only know her?