Charity: Iraq excludes 45,000 children born under IS rule

In this March 18, 2019 photo, Um Yusuf, a widow of an Islamic State group militant, and her children have lunch, in Mosul, Iraq. Thousands of Iraqi families face crushing social and legal discrimination -- all because of the choices their male relatives made under the Islamic State group’s rule. Um Yusuf and her seven children were left to shoulder the stigma of her husband's IS affiliation. She cannot get social assistance, and her teenage son Omar is being turned away from jobs. (AP Photo/Farid Abdulwahed)

COPENHAGEN, Denmark – An international charity says an estimated 45,000 children in Iraq who were born under the rule of the Islamic State group are being excluded from society because the government denies them documentation and ID papers.

Jan Egeland, the Norwegian Refugee Council's secretary general, is warning that these children — most of whom are in camps for the displaced today — are a "possible human time-bomb."

They were born during IS's 2013-2017 rule, when the militant group controlled nearly a third of Iraq. The government today considers their birth certificates invalid because they were issued by IS.

After U.S.-backed forces defeated the IS and the militants lost their self-styled "caliphate," many IS families and those of civilians who lived under the group's rule were put in camps for the displaced.