There are currently tens of thousands of people living in life-threatening conditions in detention camps in Syria. In March 2023, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres praised Iraq for repatriating its citizens from Al-Hol, a detention camp in northeast Syria that he described as “the worst camp that exists in today’s world”. Two years later, the conditions in the camp are arguably worse, and yet some Iraqis would rather remain in Al-Hol because international organisations have been unable to protect returnees upon their return to Iraq.

International bodies such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) must do more to ensure that States who are repatriating their citizens are upholding their obligations under international law and transferring or removing individuals to other States where they are at risk of irreparable harm.

Al-Hol and Repatriation Efforts

Al-Hol, one of the largest detention camps in Syria, currently houses Iraqi refugees and displaced Syrians, as well as the families of suspected terrorists. Due to the dire conditions in the camp, UN agencies, humanitarian organisations, and human rights organisations have called on governments to repatriate their nationals from Al-Hol.

The Iraqi government has led more than a dozen repatriation campaigns since the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was defeated in 2019. Between 2021 and 2025 alone, Iraqi authorities repatriated approximately 10,000 Iraqis who were detained in northeast Syria, 7,000 of whom were being held in Al-Hol. Upon return, most returnees are sent to the Al-Jeddah Community Rehabilitation Centre (‘Al-Jeddah’), a rehabilitation camp near Mosul, before they reintegrate back into Iraqi society.

Recently, these repatriations have come under scrutiny. In October 2024, Amnesty International reported that since 2021, several Iraqis who were being rehabilitated at Al-Jeddah, including women and children, had been arrested and later subjected to torture, ill-treatment and disappearances. The torture and ill-treatment some returnees experienced included being severely beaten, electric shocks, forced into stress positions, and having their air supply cut off by suffocation using plastic bags or by being forcibly submerged in water.

The Role of the UNHCR

At first glance, it may appear as though there is little that international law can do to protect individuals who have been repatriated by their governments. The text of the Refugee Convention only gives the UNHCR a mandate to protect those who have left their countries of origin. However, in 1980, the UNHCR Executive Committee examined the issue of repatriation and codified that the UNHCR’s mandate translates into the obligation to obtain formal guarantees for the safety of returning refugees and to monitor the situation of returning refugees in their countries of origin.

In 1985, the Executive Committee reaffirmed the UNHCR’s mandate over repatriation, and explicitly noted that as the UNHCR has a “legitimate concern” for the consequences of the return on individuals, States must allow the UNHCR to have “direct and unhindered access to returnees.”

Al-Hol is not the only camp in Syria from which displaced persons and detainees and their families need to be repatriated. There are thousands of men, women, and children living in dire conditions in approximately 25 detention facilities and camps across the country.

As important as repatriation is, the UNHCR must fulfill the full extent of its mandate and take steps to ensure that refugees who are repatriated to their home countries are not at risk of irreparable harm. It must demand access to reintegration facilities where returnees are being held to adequately monitor their well-being and remind States who are repatriating their citizens that they have obligations under international law to not expose individuals to human rights violations when they return home.

If repatriating States are not bound by the Refugee Convention, as in the case of Iraq, other international bodies such as the Human Rights Committee and Committee Against Torture must take appropriate action to ensure that States that are bound by their respective treaties are not violating the human rights of returnees. States cannot be allowed to use repatriation as a tool to facilitate the commission of acts prohibited by international law.