Celebrities including Vanessa Kirby, Stanley Tucci and Gillian Anderson have joined human rights advocates in urging the Government to repatriate British families detained in Syria.
It is estimated around 25 British families - mostly mothers and children - are currently detained in overcrowded and violent camps in northeast Syria after the collapse of the Islamic State.
They are thought to be among around 62,000 people held in the notorious Al-Hol and Roj camps since 2019.
Children are exposed to violence, abuse and trafficking, War Child, a non-government organisation protecting rights of children in conflict, said.
Most of the British detainees are children and the majority are under 10 years old, according to War Child. They are understood to have been in detention since 2019.
War Child UK, Reprieve, Human Rights Watch and Child Rights International Network have teamed up with celebrities to sign an open letter calling for the families to be brought home.
London-born Mission Impossible actor Vanessa Kirby said: “British families are currently being held in horrible conditions where they are exposed daily to disease and violence. The majority of British people agree that the UK has a responsibility to bring back these British families and it is now time to take action.”
Families of the British citizens detained in northeast Syria say children are denied access to education, healthcare and “basic rights other British children take for granted”.
Bring British Families Home, a collective of relatives, said: “We have sisters, cousins and aunts who are victims of trafficking but are denied the right to come home. Our families have been torn apart by the government stripping citizenship from our relatives in blanket politicised decisions, abandoning them to face death, disappearance or re-trafficking.
“We are astonished that the British government is alone in refusing to bring back these families.”
The UK government has been criticsed for trailing behind its international partners on the issue.
Since 2019 at least 38 countries have repatriated some or many of their nationals including, in the last year alone, France, Spain, Australia, Canada, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
The UK is known to have repatriated 10 children - nine of whom were unaccompanied orphans. Shamima Begum, who fled east London as a teenager in 2015 to join the IS, lost her battle to retain her British citizenship in the Supreme Court earlier this year.
CEO Rob Williams said: “The British children detained in Northeast Syria are innocent victims of conflict. Like all children held in the region, they have lived through violence, displacement and acute deprivation, and need specialised help to recover from their experiences.”
The open letter to the Government has been signed by charitable organisations, celebrities and security experts.
It states: “Britain should take responsibility for its citizens, not seek to cast them out into a legal black hole in dire conditions.
“It is shameful that narrow political considerations have triumphed over common sense and respect for the rule of law for so long, but there is still time for the Government to follow the example of many of its allies and rethink this unconscionable policy.”
According to new research by War Child, 53 per cent of British adults surveyed said they would support the UK Government acting to bring home British families, compared to only 13 per cent who would oppose it.
