Sweden: Over 900 children were kidnapped; half of them trafficked to Iraq and Syria

Stockholm: Over 900 Swedish children were kidnapped or trafficked to Iraq and Syria, Swedish media reported.

Reports say that 48% of the children were taken to Iraq and Syria and that most of them were girls.

According to the SVT report, Sweden provides no national statistics on the number of children who are deported or forcibly taken abroad.

SVT has done mapping of the facts using statistics from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It says, in the past five years, at least 1,151 people have been abducted or illegally detained in another country. 235 of them are over 18 – many of them young adults.

Since 2018, when the UD started releasing such statistics, it was noted that at least 1,151 people were evicted or legally held in another country. Of these, 235 are adults – often young adults – and 916 are children.

Ia Sveger, a lawyer who has spent 20 years defending impacted parents and children, believes that there are probably many covert abductions.

She tells SVT that “the number is likely even greater.”

She notes that because they do not believe the Swedish authorities will be able to help, family choose not to disclose this.

This is especially true of kidnappings that occur in nations that are not signatories to the Hague Convention such as Iraq and Somalia, or so-called non-convention countries.

Ia Sveger tells SVT that the Foreign Ministry’s assistance is quite restricted there.

According to SVT, Somalia or Iraq are home to nearly half of the children who were kidnapped in an honour context
in 2021 and 2022.

The mapping reveals that less than one-third of those involved in the cases go back to Sweden. Fewer than a third of all the people who go away return.

“I always recommend my clients to hire a lawyer on the sites – otherwise the chances to get their child back in a non-conventional country are very limited,” Sveger said.

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