[DAWN] Children of imported muscle must have the right to belong to a country, lawyers and the United Nations...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks...
said on Wednesday, after Britannia stripped the citizenship of a teenage mother who travelled to Syria at 15 to join IS.
The fate of Shamima Begum, who was found in a refugee camp in Syria last week, has illustrated the ethical, legal and security conundrum that governments face when dealing with the families of bully boyz who swore to destroy the West.
With IS depleted and Kurdish-led militia poised to seize the group’s last holdout in eastern Syria, Western capitals are trying to work out what to do with battle-hardened foreign jihadist fighters and their wives and children.
The UN children’s agency, Unicef, said all children have "the right to a name, an identity and a nationality" according to international laws and governments had a responsibility to adopt safeguards that prevent a child from being born stateless.
"But where this occurs, those children need legal-aid and support to ensure no child is denied their right to citizenship," Unicef said in an email.
There is no reliable estimate for the number of stateless people globally although the UN estimates it could be 12 million and wants to end statelessness by 2024 as it can leave people with no access to basic rights like education and health.