The futures of a dozen women and 21 children wanting to return to Australia from refugee camps in northern Syria will be decided in a Federal Court trial set to begin in Melbourne.
Save the Children launched a legal fight against the Commonwealth earlier this year, arguing for the repatriation of the group being detained by the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria and its defence arm, the Syrian Democratic Forces.
The case centres around claims the group’s detention is unlawful and questions about why successive federal governments have allowed some women and children to return and not others.
The women are all Australian citizens. One of the children is now an adult, while others have been born since their mothers were detained.
Three women and five children have joined the case since a hearing in June when Save the Children’s barrister Emrys Nekvapil SC said Syrian authorities wanted foreign governments, including Australia’s, to repatriate citizens from the al-Roj camp.
Eight children were returned to Australia in 2019 and in October last year four women and 13 children were repatriated.
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“That’s an important feature of our argument because we say, in effect, why them and not the remainder,” Nekvapil said.
Save the Children Australia chief executive Mat Tinkler, who visited the camp last year, accused the federal government of abandoning the women and children.
“Despite countless opportunities to repatriate these families, the Australian government has ultimately failed in its duty to bring all of its citizens home to safety,” he said.
“The government cannot allow these innocent children to suffer further – they must do what is legally and morally right, before it’s too late.”
Both Nekvapil and the Commonwealth’s barrister Craig Lenehan SC had pushed for the trial to go ahead in September, citing the potential destabilisation of the situation in Syria.
