About CASIS

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European politicians, practitioners and civil society organisations continue to struggle with  developing an adequate response to concern over young returnees from Islamic  State. Since the start of the conflict, at least 5,000 individuals from Europe have travelled to  Syria and Iraq, with significant  proportions returning or looking to return following the collapse of Islamic State. According to a 2019 study by the Egmont Institute, between 400 and 500 European nationals remain in the area, along with around 700 children who either travelled with parents  or were born in the region. The issue of a significant number of European minors, as well the  fact that many individuals travelled to Islamic State under the age of 18, has led to questions over  how to respond which veer between the language of security and that of safeguarding and  child protection.   

The language of child protection and safeguarding has become an established part of  counterterrorism and counter-extremism policymaking and practice in recent years. Indeed,  engagement with extremist online content and recruitment is increasingly framed by  practitioners as akin to child abuse, gender-based violence or sexual grooming. In the  UK, the counterterror ‘Prevent’ programme utilises safeguarding language to legitimise its  controversial role in public sector bodies such as educational, judicial and health and social  care institutions. Governments of several European states have increasingly come to frame  extremism as the similar result of a series of ‘risk factors’ and ‘vulnerabilities’, and the  European Commission is currently engaged in developing online responses to extremist  content which draw directly from existing child sexual abuse safeguards.  

Whilst the language of safeguarding has been used as a means of desecuritising  discussions over extremism, it is both inconsistent in its application and inappropriate in its  impact. This safeguarding lens acts to depoliticise engagement with groups such as Islamic  State, casting extremism as a technical problem – with a technical solution – that obscures  agency and complex processes of diengagement and disengagement with violence. The language of safeguarding has also been strategically ignored by  European politicians in high profile instances. Governments have often avoided the repatriation of children and individuals who  travelled to Syria and Iraq when under the age of 18, with 130 adults and 270-320 children  of French nationality currently indefinitely detained in Syria, Iraq and Turkey, for instance.    

The case of Shamima Begum is a notable instance of the problematic use of ‘safeguarding’.  Her case sits well within the UK’s own legal and practical conceptualisation of counterterror  safeguarding – an individual who has endured child grooming, forced marriage, sexual abuse and trafficking. Yet despite Home  Office guidance recommendations that young returnees receive repatriation and community reintegration, the UK Government has deployed discourses of security to justify the use of stripping of Begum’s British citizenship. These  contradictions, and the problematic blanket application of safeguarding approaches to  counterterrorism policies, require urgent attention.