The United Kingdom's Home Office is under scrutiny by the national information watchdog over refusal to disclose the number of women stripped of British citizenship after traveling to join the Islamic State terror group (IS, banned in Russia), The Guardian reported on Monday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th March, 2021) The United Kingdom's Home Office is under scrutiny by the national information watchdog over refusal to disclose the number of women stripped of British citizenship after traveling to join the Islamic State terror group (IS, banned in Russia), The Guardian reported on Monday.
The country last time published data on Britons who had their citizenship revoked in 2018. The Home Office pledges to publish figures for 2019 and 2020 in due course, while refusing to release the number of women affected. The refusal prompted London-based NGO Rights and Security International to turn to the Information Commissioner's Office.
The office deemed the request to be "eligible for further consideration," according to the newspaper.
Rights activists express concerns that the UK policy of revoking citizenship lacks oversight and discriminates against people � especially women with children held in impoverished camps after the IS collapse in Syria � who have nowhere to go except their country of birth.
The debate was reignited after the Supreme Court ruled that Shamima Begum, who traveled to Syria in 2015 to marry an IS member and was later stripped of her UK citizenship, cannot return home to fight her citizenship case.
