Photo: Children in refugee camp – Wikimedia Commons
The UN recently made a new call for states to repatriate their citizens from camps in Syria. About 19,000 children come from Iraq and 8,000 from elsewhere. Western Balkan countries, like many others, have been hesitant to bring all their nationals back home. But the security situation has been deteriorating lately inside the camp.
In this article by Balkan Insight, PREVEX-researcher Leonie Vrugtman from the Albanian Institute for Democracy and Mediation, provided her views on the outlook of Albania repatriating women and children.
“There is general support for repatriating Albanian children and women, so it is possible that they are repatriated in the next few months,” Vrugtman told BIRN. “However, I do not expect all Albanians in Syria to return that quickly.”
“I doubt the government would consider repatriating the rest of the Albanians right before the April elections,” she said, in reference to a parliamentary election due on April 25.
Read more about this in Balkan Insight’s article and also read PREVEX-researcher Leonie Vrugtman’s policy paper on preventing violent extremism in Albania.
