As highlighted following the decision issued by the Paris Criminal Court on 20 March 2026, the conviction of Sabri Essid for genocide, crimes against humanity, and complicity in these crimes committed against Yazidi women and children, marks a historic precedent for two main reasons. First, the decision represents the first time a French national has been found guilty of genocide. Second, the decision constitutes the first recognition by French courts of the atrocities committed by the Islamic State (“ISIS”) against the Yazidi community. The gender of the perpetrator, Sabri Essid, who is a man, is similarly noteworthy.

As European jurisdictions continue to prosecute individuals who joined the ranks of ISIS—commonly referred to as “returnees”—an interesting trend has progressively emerged whereby prosecutorial strategies appear devoid of any gender analysis. While male returnees are predominantly charged with terrorism offences, female returnees are facing prosecution for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

What is the rationale behind this distinction and, more importantly, what are its implications? Is it the result of a belated recognition of women’s complex and active roles within ISIS, challenging previous assumptions of their passivity? Or does it reflect a problematic tendency to overstate women’s involvement, driven by political and legal imperatives surrounding repatriation? Either way, these prosecutorial strategies reveal a critical gender-blind spot in European states’ responses to returnees.

This post does not have the ambition to answer these questions but merely raises them. It seeks to interrogate the gendered dynamics at play in the judicial treatment of ISIS returnees by French, German, Belgian, Dutch, and Swedish courts.  

Female European returnees should be held accountable, to the same degree as their male counterparts, for their participation in the atrocities ISIS perpetrated in Syria and Iraq. That is not up for discussion. However, the fight against impunity for core international crimes and access to justice for victims should not come at the cost of the integration of a gender perspective in prosecutorial strategies. Accountability for crimes perpetrated by an organization that oppresses women, girls, and LGBTQI+ people, and systemically uses sexual and gender-based violence, cannot be fully realized through a gender-blind lens.

Although it is important to acknowledge that women’s roles within ISIS have been underestimated, it is equally essential to analyze these roles in the context of the organization’s patriarchal and misogynistic ideology. As the long-overlooked radicalization process of female foreign ISIS fighters is increasingly analyzed, the complex and multi-dimensional nature of women’s roles under the caliphate is coming to light. Far from the fantasized idea of a homogenous, passive group deceitfully manipulated into becoming ‘ISIS wives’, women’s motivations for traveling to Syria and Iraq call for a more nuanced analysis. Similarly, it is essential to understand that women played active parts in the development and operations of the caliphate.

While an improved understanding of women’s actual role within ISIS is necessary, women’s involvement should not erase the caliphate’s misogyny towards all women and girls—a reality from which female foreign fighters were not exempt. ISIS is a man-led, woman-hating terrorist organization. It is men who developed a system of organized rape, sexual slavery, and forced marriage. It is men who “gave” captured Yazidi women and girls to fighters as ‘spoils of war.’ It is men who ripped Yazidi boys from their families and forced them into ISIS training camps. It is men who executed women for working as politicians and journalists. It is men who threw individuals accused of being gay off buildings to their death.  

In this context, women’s overrepresentation in core international crime charges must be addressed. In the absence of clear and unified repatriation processes and prosecution mechanisms, women are assigned responsibilities that may exceed their actual roles under the caliphate.

European judicial authorities must consider precedents they are setting through these seemingly gender-blind strategies. In the future, when we look at how ISIS returnees were held accountable for core international crimes committed in Syria and Iraq and how European jurisdictions tackled access to justice and reparations for the victims of an organized patriarchal system of sexual violence against women and girls—what picture will ultimately come into focus?

Current gender-blind approaches contribute to building a fundamentally distorted image of the distribution of power within ISIS. A pattern in which the overwhelming majority of those convicted of core international crimes are women risks further distorting meaningful accountability by erasing men’s central role in ISIS’s murderous and misogynistic system.