Nearly 30,000 children of so-called Islamic State militants and their supporters of various nationalities are suffering abuse in camps, prisons and rehabilitation centres in north-eastern Syria, a UN-backed commission has said.
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The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria said most of the children were brought by their parents to parts of Syria and Iraq after the extremists declared a caliphate there in 2014, and it urged all countries with children in Syria to repatriate them and integrate them into their societies.
The largest number of children are at the al-Hol Camp, which is housing tens of thousands of people, mostly wives and children of IS fighters as well as supporters of the militant group.
A smaller number of children are at the Roj Camp, while teenage boys are kept in jails and rehabilitation centres run by the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
"These children were already victimised during ISIL's rule, only to be subjected to years of continued human rights violations and abuses," commissioner Lynn Welchman said, using an acronym to refer to IS.
The commission said it has concluded that living conditions in the heavily guarded al-Hol and Roj camps "amount to cruel and inhuman treatment and outrages on personal dignity".
Roj is home to 3,000 people, including Shamima Begum, who is now 24, and was 15 when she and two other girls fled from London in February 2015 to marry IS fighters in Syria.
She married a Dutch man fighting for IS and had three children, who all died.
Last month, she lost her appeal against the UK Government's decision to revoke her citizenship, with judges saying it was not for them to rule on whether it was "harsh" to do so.
At al-Hol Camp, in a town with the same name near the Iraqi border, mostly former Soviet Republics and Iraq have been active in repatriating their citizens.
The facility was once home to 73,000 people, the vast majority of them Syrians and Iraqis.
Over the past few years, the population dropped to nearly 45,000 as some countries repatriated their citizens, said Sheikhmous Ahmad, a Kurdish official overseeing camps for the displaced in north-eastern Syria.
Citizens from other nationalities live in a part of the camp known as the Annex, considered the home of the most die-hard IS supporters, many of whom came to Syria and Iraq starting in 2014.
"Regrettably a small percentage of foreign countries are repatriating their citizens," Mr Ahmad said. He added that 600 Iraqi citizens were repatriated last week.
In February, the SDF concluded a days-long security operation at al-Hol during which they detained 85 people, captured weapons and freed a Yazidi woman who had been raped and forced to marry IS fighters.
"These children were all only 12 years old or younger at the time of Isil's rule - what crimes could possibly justify their continued detention? End the inertia now," Ms Welchman said.
Australian Associated Press
