Myriam Francois is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the New Lines Institute. She also is a Franco-British freelance journalist, broadcaster, filmmaker, and writer with a focus on current affairs, Europe and the Middle East.
A former assistant editor of emel magazine and former columnist at the New Statesman, she has had articles featured in The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The New Statesman, Al Jazeera English, The Independent, The New Internationalist, Your Middle East, The Huffington Post, The London Paper, Index on Censorship, and others. She is a seasoned journalist, having reported for BBC World Service, BBC London News, and TRTWorld, where she was the Europe correspondent from 2015-2017.
In 2003, following extensive research into the faith, Francois converted to Islam and is active as a spokesperson for Muslim understanding, appearing on BBC Big Questions (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011) alongside Dame Ann Leslie, Beverly Knight, the Rev. Peter Owen-Jones and others. She also has contributed to discussions on Newsnight (2009), 4thought (2011), BBC News (2010), Crosstalk (2010) and in documentaries, including “The Life of Muhammad,” presented by Rageh Omar (2011).
Francois received her Master of Arts, with honors, in Middle East politics from Georgetown University and a Bachelor of Arts from Cambridge University in social and political science. She completed her Ph.D. at Oxford on University, focusing on Islamic movements in Morocco, in 2017. She was nominated as part of the “40 Under 40” European Young Leaders class of 2017. Francois was presented with a “Women in Media” award at the Muslim Women Awards in 2021. She tweets at @MyriamFrancoisC.
European children whose parents joined the Islamic State suffer in squalid camps in Syria with little hope of returning home. Europe needs to take a unified approach to repatriating these minors and ensure support and justice.
The children of ISIS supporters are first and foremost a vulnerable group in need of urgent assistance due to their location in a volatile and war-torn region. The urgency of the question of how to manage their cases cannot be overstated, given the current instability in the region and the ongoing threat posed by COVID-19.
