The case of eight-year-old Is­mael Roberts, high­light­ed in this news­pa­per, be­ing re­port­ed­ly de­nied the start of his ed­u­ca­tion is dif­fi­cult to com­pre­hend. From the sto­ry giv­en by his moth­er, her son was born in Syr­ia, where her hus­band had gone to join the Is­lam­ic State of Iran and Syr­ia (ISIS) in its ji­had against the es­tab­lished gov­ern­ment.

Ms Mar­sha Roberts says she has not been al­lowed to en­roll her son in a school, as he has been de­nied iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pa­pers and oth­er nec­es­sary doc­u­ments to al­low the process. The case of Mas­ter Roberts is even more dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand, as he was al­lowed in­to T&T al­though he was born in Syr­ia, but ac­cord­ing to his moth­er, is now be­ing de­nied the op­por­tu­ni­ty at this crit­i­cal stage of his life, of the right to start an ed­u­ca­tion.

As of yes­ter­day, there was no re­sponse on the mat­ter from Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly. Sure­ly, such a clar­i­fi­ca­tion and/or jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is nec­es­sary to un­der­stand the prob­lems as­so­ci­at­ed with young Is­mael not be­ing able to at­tend school.

The Min­is­ter must al­so state if the case of Mas­ter Roberts is one repli­cat­ed in many in­stances here. There have al­so been the re­port­ed in­stances of Venezue­lan chil­dren, whose par­ents have been al­lowed to live and work here, but their chil­dren are out of school for one rea­son or the oth­er.

At eight years, it’s al­ready quite late for Is­mael, who has al­ready lost out on his ear­ly ground­ing in ed­u­ca­tion. If not cor­rect­ed soon, this de­fi­cien­cy can im­pact se­ri­ous­ly on his long-term ed­u­ca­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and so, the qual­i­ty of his life. What­ev­er the prob­lems of his fa­ther, Is­mael is a com­plete in­no­cent.

A num­ber of Gov­ern­ment spokesper­sons, in­clud­ing min­is­ters, have talked about the con­cerns of hav­ing per­sons here who have had some in­doc­tri­na­tion to and in­ter­ac­tion with mil­i­tant ide­olo­gies abroad re­turn­ing. It is a very le­git­i­mate rea­son for a gov­ern­ment to be cau­tious about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of per­sons so in­doc­tri­nat­ed, due to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of them spread­ing those ide­olo­gies here.

How­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment must de­vel­op poli­cies to pro­vide the cor­rect en­vi­ron­ment for those who de­lib­er­ate­ly, forcibly or were co­erced be­come in­volved with ISIS to be al­lowed re-en­try. In in­sist­ing on such poli­cies and pro­grammes, the Gov­ern­ment will be safe­guard­ing the na­tion­al in­ter­est.

How­ev­er, and this is the big and trou­bling point, it has tak­en too long a pe­ri­od to de­vel­op the struc­tures nec­es­sary to ac­com­mo­date a re­turn of the na­tion­als and their chil­dren.

From re­ports, our na­tion­als, like peo­ple from oth­er coun­tries, are liv­ing in hell­ish con­di­tions in for­eign coun­tries. What are such per­sons to do, as they may not be al­lowed to en­ter any oth­er coun­try; and that will be no fault of those gov­ern­ments.

Hav­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ac­cept na­tion­als want­i­ng to re­turn home af­ter the ISIS mis­ad­ven­ture is not unique to Trinidad and To­ba­go. Re­ports are that coun­tries such as Aus­tralia, which is very cau­tious about its bor­ders, neigh­bour­ing Bar­ba­dos, Cana­da and the Unit­ed King­dom have al­lowed their na­tion­als to re-en­ter.

Is it over-cau­tion in the in­stance of the Gov­ern­ment; or does it have to do with in­suf­fi­cient com­mit­ment to have na­tion­als back home?