Former Foreign ISIS Women Urgently Seek Repatriation and Rehabilitation for International Security, Australia

Melbourne, Jul 1 (360info) As governments ignore pleas from former female ISIS members to return home it undermines human rights and weakens international security. For the past decade, researchers across the globe have been fascinated with the rise and fall of the ISIS terrorist group. The group’s self-declared Caliphate emerged from the ashes of the Syrian civil war and Iraqi Islamist insurgency. Then within five years, all of its territory — which at one point spread across Syria, Iraq and threatened the Turkish border — was gone. ISIS attracted more than 40,000 foreign members to join its Caliphate in Syria and Iraq, of which approximately 10 per cent were women. This was the first time that thousands of female members had joined a terrorist group overseas. In the last decade, feminist researchers have been analysing the nuances of women’s involvement and experiences with the group — the why and how. Yet, there has been little focus on the foreign women (and children) who still remain in Syria and Iraq and the urgency of their repatriation, rehabilitation and reintegration. The unanswered questions remain over what should happen to the foreign women who are not repatriated from the camps, and for those who are repatriated what rehabilitation and reintegration programmes are in place that account for the experiences that these women had.