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UN expert welcomes UK court decision to allow Shamima fight for citizenship


Published : 17 Jul 2020 09:57 PM | Updated : 07 Sep 2020 10:51 AM

Radicalized on British soil as a London schoolgirl, an independent UN expert welcomed a Court of Appeal ruling in the United Kingdom on Thursday, to allow 20-year-old Shamima Begum to return home from Syria to challenge the government’s removal of her citizenship.

“Citizenship is a gateway right, which enables and supports the right to have other rights, and without it individuals are profoundly vulnerable to harm”, said Fionnuala D. Ní Aoláin, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism.

The UK court’s decision came as a respite for Bangladesh as the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) earlier while ruling against Shamima said she could apply for Bangladeshi citizenship, where her parents are both originally from.

Following that, the Bangladesh foreign ministry last month asserted that Shamima has never been a citizen of Bangladesh and she will not be given the right to enter the country.

British citizen Shamima joined the terrorist group Islamic State at the age of 15. The British government cancelled her citizenship in February last year when she returned.

She appealed to the High Court and the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. The court rejected her appeal and described her as a citizen of Bangladesh.

“The clear stance of the Bangladesh government is that Shamima has never been a citizen of Bangladesh and she has no right in this regard. There is no scope to allow her to enter Bangladesh,” the foreign ministry last month said in a statement.
Shamima was one of three schoolgirls who left the UK capital in 2015 to join ISIL terrorist fighters in Syria.

Aged 15, she married an alleged ISIL combatant and gave birth to two children while still a minor, and then a third after turning 18.

All three children died, the third while they were detained at Al Hol refugee camp in northern Syria.
The UN expert said as a fundamental right under international law, it is prohibited to arbitrarily deprive a person of citizenship, saying having status provided “essential protection for individuals”.

Ní Aoláin commended the UK court for “grasping the essential and absolute importance of the right to meaningfully participate in the proceedings depriving a person of their citizenship”.

She valued the “independence and thoughtfulness of the Court’s review” along with its willingness “to allow for a human rights intervention, and its acknowledgment of the relevance of international law to such proceedings”.

The Special Rapporteur intervened in the case, she said, because of “the severe and irreparable consequences” of revoking citizenship to the minor when she travelled to Syria.

She described the then adolescent as “a child who may have been groomed online, and who had no meaningful capacity to participate in the legal proceedings depriving her of citizenship”.

The independent UN expert, was “deeply concerned” that Shamima – along with other women and children abandoned by their own governments - were eking out “survival in an overcrowded camp and under conditions that were inhumane and degrading that amount to torture under international law and where her right to life is under constant threat”.

“The urgent return and repatriation of foreign fighters and their families from these conflict zones is the only international law-compliant response to the increasingly complex and precarious human rights, humanitarian and security situation faced by those women, men and children”, the Special Rapporteur concluded.

Independent experts are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country situation.
The positions are honorary, and the experts are neither UN staff nor paid for their work.