Giving Compass' Take:

• Eric Rosand calls for an increased effort towards assisting children of ISIS with safe reintegration after rescue.

• What resources does it take to recover from extreme trauma? What can you do to make these resources more available? 

• Learn more about supporting the first step of the rescue process.

According to the most recent U.N. figures, 66,101 people are being held in the deteriorating conditions in the al-Hol camp in northeast Syria, 96% of whom are women and children, with 66% of the children under 18 years old.

Most of the public debate around repatriation has focused on whether or not to do so and the legal, logistical, and security obstacles involved. Less attention has been given to perhaps a more fundamental set of issues:

1) What are the needs and risks of the children and other individuals?

2) What type of framework could be used to facilitate their healthy and safe reintegration?

3) Are countries, including those that have yet to facilitate repatriation, equipped with the capacities to address the needs and build and implement such a framework?

4) Are there training or other programs available — or that could be developed — to help build those capacities? More global attention on this set of issues, with a particular focus on children, is needed.

What is needed is a multidisciplinary group that includes the range of expertise needed for this population, and that can work with interested countries to develop and implement a comprehensive program. Such a group — which could receive support from governments, the U.N., and private donors — could bring together the diverse knowledge bases held by psychologists; psychiatrists; pediatricians; educators; researchers; social, youth, and health workers; and theologians.

The group could address a key gap by providing integrated and sustained support, from the diversity of experts involved, to the countries facing the myriad challenges associated with the rehabilitation and reintegration of children and other family members returning from the conflict zone in Iraq and Syria.

Read the full article about how supporting the children of ISIS goes beyond rescue by Eric Rosand at Brookings.