Finnish prosecutors charged a Finnish-Russian woman in her 40s with two counts of aggravated trafficking in human beings, alleging that she took her children from Finland to ISIS-controlled Syria in 2014 and exposed them to conditions incompatible with human dignity. The woman denies the charges, which are now before the Eastern Uusimaa District Court.

The case could become important well beyond Finland. It reconnects two debates that Europe has largely treated separately: migration and the return of European nationals from conflict zones.

Across Europe, migration politics increasingly emphasises return: countries of origin are expected to readmit their nationals, cooperate with European authorities and assume responsibility for them.

However, the question of returning terrorism-affiliated individuals, or as commonly referred to as “foreign-terrorist fighters”, has exposed an inversion of that principle. When European citizens travelled to ISIS-controlled territory, several European governments were reluctant to repatriate them, leaving a big burden of responsibility to authorities and communities outside Europe.

The comparison is not an argument that irregular migrants and foreign fighters are legally equivalent. They clearly are not. It is about the principle of responsibility for one’s nationals.

If Europe expects third countries to take responsibility for the return of their nationals, it must confront the same responsibility when European citizens are stranded in conflict zones. Security concerns may shape how they are returned, investigated and prosecuted, but they should not determine whether responsibility exists at all. Repatriation cannot be a principle the EU demands abroad but hesitates to apply at home.

Finland decided in good faith to move toward the repatriation of its citizens from former ISIS-controlled territories in Syria. Its government has stated that, from 2019, its policy was to repatriate Finnish children from al-Hol as soon as possible, where necessary, together with their mothers. Since then, the government adopted guidelines on repatriating Finnish nationals. Finnish authorities subsequently reported the repatriation of 35 people: 26 children and 9 adult women.

Trafficking: a specific case demanding legal route

The prosecution of the mother is nevertheless legally significant. Under Chapter 25, Section 3 of the Finnish Criminal Code, trafficking includes transporting or otherwise controlling a person for purposes that include placing that person in conditions violating human dignity. Where the victim is under 18, Finnish law does not require proof of the coercion, deception or abuse of vulnerability normally associated with trafficking. Aggravated trafficking specifically encompasses offences directed against children and carries a penalty of two to ten years’ imprisonment where the statutory conditions are satisfied.

This broadly reflects Article 2 of EU Directive 2011/36/EU of 5 April 2011 on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims. Yet the absence of a requirement to prove coercive means in cases involving children does not eliminate the need to establish the other constituent elements of trafficking, including the relevant purpose.

The need to establish the constituent elements of child trafficking matters; otherwise, trafficking risks becoming a legal shortcut through which taking children into an extraordinarily dangerous environment is automatically considered as trafficking. The alleged conduct may warrant serious criminal responsibility, but the presumption of innocence and the principle of legality and morality (intent) require the prosecution to prove the offence charged, not simply the horror of the destination.

The question now is: if the children were trafficking victims, where does the State’s responsibility begin?

If the prosecution characterises the children as victims of trafficking because they were transported into conditions violating human dignity, the legal inquiry should not stop with the mother.

European anti-trafficking law does not conceive trafficking merely as an offence to be prosecuted, but as a condition triggering positive protection obligations toward its victims.

Article 13(1) of Directive 2011/36/EU requires that child victims receive assistance, support and protection, with their best interests treated as a primary consideration. Article 14(1) goes further, requiring Member States to take specific measures for their short- and long-term physical and psychosocial recovery, following an individual assessment and with a view to finding a durable solution for the child.

This obligation should also be read alongside Articles 19, 35 and 39 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child of 20 November 1989. Together, these provisions require states to protect children against violence and exploitation, prevent their abduction, sale or trafficking, and promote the physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of children subjected to exploitation, abuse or armed conflict. The legal architecture is therefore not exclusively punitive: it imposes duties of prevention, protection and recovery upon the state itself.

For Finland, the case is currently different. On 12 September 2022, in F.S.N. et al. v. Finland, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child found Finland in violation of its Articles 6(1) and 37(a) of the Convention concerning Finnish children held in northeast Syria whose parents were associated with terrorist activity. The Committee required effective reparation and measures preventing similar violations.

What is the legal symmetry with the case against the Finnish-Russian mother charged of child trafficking? In other words, if a mother may bear criminal responsibility for taking children into conditions violating human dignity, what responsibility arose for the state once it knew that its child nationals remained exposed to those conditions?

The two forms of responsibility are not equivalent. One concerns individual criminal liability; the other concerns the positive obligations of the state. But prosecution of the former should not be allowed to erase examination of the latter.

The criminal proceedings are poorly equipped to answer why a mother and her children would leave Finland, one of Europe’s most prosperous welfare societies, renowned internationally for its education system, among others, for ISIS-controlled Syria.

That question neither excuses the mother’s choices nor diminishes individual responsibility. It addresses something criminal justice frequently encounters too late: causality.

What happened before departure? What ideological networks reached the family? What vulnerabilities were exploited? Were the warning signs visible? What did schools, communities, social services, or security institutions know? Where might earlier intervention have changed the trajectory?

Punishment tells us who crossed a legal boundary. Truth requires us to understand the road that brought them there.

This is where NCCT’s work begins

This is precisely the space in which the Nordic Center for Conflict Transformation (NCCT) has increasingly positioned its work: connecting what happens upstream of radicalisation with prosecution, rehabilitation and reintegration downstream.

Through its work in Oum Action program, with mothers and families, NCCT treats mothers not merely as relatives of individuals at risk but as potential actors in early detection, communication, resilience and prevention. At the other end of the trajectory, its work on prosecution, rehabilitation and reintegration examines how States respond once individuals have already crossed the threshold into violent extremism and terrorism.

NCCT’s May 2025 report, Terrorism-Affiliated Adults: From Allegation to Accountability, takes this question further through a cross-regional examination of accountability, international crimes and transitional-justice approaches.

The significance of this approach is that accountability should not be reduced to prosecution. A sustainable security response must connect prevention, evidence, prosecution, protection, rehabilitation, reintegration, and truth using transitional justice mechanisms. Because justice requires truth, not only punishment

The Finnish case should therefore become more than Finland versus one mother. A court can determine whether she committed aggravated trafficking against her own children. It cannot alone explain why the family left Finland, how radicalisation occurred, where prevention failed, what protection obligations subsequently arose, and what Europe should learn from the trajectory.

Punishment asks who should answer for what happened. Truth asks why it became possible. Europe needs both, and the same coherence Europe demands from countries of origin in today’s migration and repatriation debate should inform its approach to its own nationals returning from conflict zones: responsibility cannot be externalised simply because those returning are difficult, dangerous or politically inconvenient.

The ultimate measure of security policy is therefore not simply how effectively Europe prosecutes yesterday’s returnees, but how seriously it investigates the conditions that produced them, and how effectively it prevents the next mother and child from taking the same road.