Professor Michele Grossman

rigid interpretation of Sharia law and it stood for the annihilation of people and cultures and groups who did not believe in what they believed in or who stood in their way.

So the children would have been exposed to that at an ideological level.

Violence was very much normalized, the routine use of violence.

This is in Islamic State territory.

The caliphate falls, and then both men and women and children are then dispersed to a variety of camps.

The exposure to violence would have continued in those camps.

There were a range of conflicts between different groups or factions.

There was the kind of violence that you do find.

in refugee camps where people are desperate and where there are efforts to, you know, control and police behaviours, that's what life would have been like.

So I think in terms of security risks, nobody who is not a member of a law enforcement or an intelligence agency really has the knowledge to comment on what kind of security risk they pose.

and for me that's a very important point.

There's a lot of rhetoric out there but you know it's important to remember that we're talking on a case-by-case basis.

So I don't think that we can do much more and I don't think we should do much more than rely on the assessment of the intelligence agencies in particular.

ASIO has come out publicly and clearly to say that they are comfortable, they have provided an assessment of risk, they are comfortable

There's been one exclusion order against one woman in that camp, one Australian woman, who has been prevented from returning.

And that was based on a security risk assessment.

But the fact that the rest of them have been enabled to return without those exclusion orders being placed against their return tells you something about how the level of risk has been assessed.

So look, I think there are a number of elements that go into dealing with people returning from this kind of conflict zone.

Regardless of what you think of the politics of it all, every single one of the people coming back will have experienced some form of trauma.

So there will need to be a trauma-informed framework and trauma-based counseling and support, especially provided for the children.