Shamima Begum: Where is she living now?

Shamima Begum remains "de facto stateless" after losing her most recent appeal over her British citizenship after it was revoked in 2019.

The former schoolgirl, who was just 15 when she fled the UK to join the terror group Isis in Syria, was “recruited, transported, transferred, harboured and received in Syria for the purposes of ‘sexual exploitation’ and ‘marriage’ to an adult male”, her legal team had argued in the November appeal.

But in a ruling on Wednesday, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission upheld the Home Office's previous position, despite her lawyers arguing she had no real protection from becoming stateless as "a citizen of Bangladesh by descent".

"It is clear that, had the Home Secretary made inquiries as to the practical effect of depriving the appellant of her citizenship, he would likely have understood that the appellant could be left without the protection of any state, in the dire conditions of the Roj camp," Begum's lawyers argued in November.

"He would have been aware that the deprivation decision was likely to render the appellant de facto stateless."

• Read more: What happened to Shamima Begum and what's next? (Yahoo News UK, 5-min read)

Where is Shamima Begum living now?

Begum has been held in the Roj camp for internationally displaced persons in northern Syria since 2019. Her youngest child, Jarrah, was born in the camp and died three weeks later from pneumonia, records show.

Arriving at the camp while she was pregnant with her third child - having lost her first two children to malnutrition and disease - Begum appealed to the then home secretary Sajid Javid to let her return home, saying that she was worried about the safety of her unborn child.

"I was hoping maybe for the sake of my child they would let me back. I can’t live in this camp forever," she said shortly after giving birth.

The al Hol and Roj camps have been referred to by the High Commissioner for Human Rights as “overcrowded displacement camps”. Roj Camp, the smaller of the two, is home to around 3,000 people, 65% of whom are children, according to recent United Nations Human Rights estimate.

The camp's conditions have been described as "dire" by Begum's legal team, while reports of malnutrition, disease, sexual assault and death are widespread.

According to Human Rights Watch, which last visited the camps in May 2022: "Conditions for the children are life-threatening, deeply degrading, and in many cases, inhuman; their cumulative psychological impact may amount to torture. Medical care, clean water, and shelter, as well as education and recreation for children are grossly inadequate."

The majority of the 37,000 foreign nationals held in al Hol and Roj are the families of suspected Isis members, many younger than 12 years old, whose home nations refuse to repatriate them - leaving them in a state of limbo.

Watch: Shamima Begu loses appeal

Parents of children in the camp have told of desperate bids to protect them from attacks from adults loyal to Isis, while numerous sexual assaults have been reported.

Begum herself has spoken about being targeted in the camp and fears of her tent being torched by people who consider her less devout for wearing Western clothes.

“When the first tent fire happened we just got back to normal and then the second fire happened and then we just live in fear constantly," she told The Daily Mail at the time.

Speaking to journalist Josh Baker for the BBC, Begum said of her time in Roj: “This is, I feel, worse than a prison I think it’s because at least with prison sentences you know that there will be an end but here you don’t know if there’s going to be an end.”

Read more: OPINION - Shamima Begum was brainwashed, she doesn’t owe us regret or remorse (Evening Standard, 4-min read)