Research reveals a complex multi-faceted environment and consistently shows that there is no single FTF profile.28 Available information and experience suggests that assumptions regarding FTF profiles and triggers have often proved erroneous. For example, assumptions along gender lines that women and girls are victims and not agents have proven dangerously ill-founded.29 Furthermore, the fact that many FTFs are themselves children of a range of ages, with some born to FTFs abroad and educated as fighters, raises particular challenges and concerns regarding child protection (see section 3.8). Significant research, focusing on Europe, also suggests there may be other factors relevant to appropriate responses, such as high levels of mental illness on the part of so-called “suspected jihadi radicals” drawn to foreign fighting, which have not yet been fully explored.30 Several studies enquiring into the motivation of FTFs similarly reflect a greater range of possible “push and pull” factors than were apparent when the issue first gained international attention.31 These factors, and in particular social structural “push” factors, vary dramatically between individuals and contexts. As “push and pull factors intertwine in different ways according to the individual and the internal and external environment each one faces,” simplistic attempts at identifying the source of the problem are bound for failure.32 This underlines the need for crafting and channeling relevant responses – both the responses that seek to prevent individuals from leaving as well as those that address returnees – in a way that is targeted to particular cases and contexts. Nonetheless, certain motivations have been shown to recur in available research and are of potential relevance to human rights considerations discussed later in this document. These include personal motivations (such as lack of opportunities, personal circumstances and the search for identity and meaning) as well as ideological ones (including, for example, empathy and outrage for Muslim victims of violence and against “Western” 28  UNOCT Report July 2017, op. cit., note 27. 29  See section 3.7 on the gender dimension below. In early practice, very few females were prosecuted as a result, but it has been suggested that in the Netherlands and Belgium lessons have been learned and since 2016 “no distinction” has been made between the prosecution of women and men, in sharp contrast to earlier experience. The division has also, reportedly, narrowed in Germany. See, for example, T. Renard and R. Coolsaet (eds), “Returnees: who are they, why are they (not) coming back and how should we deal with them?”, Egmont Institute, op. cit., note 14. 30  See claim by mental health specialists that 60 per cent of suspected jihadi radicals in the Netherlands had a history of mental health problems, in C. Paulussen, J. Nijman, K. Lismont, “Mental Health and the Foreign Fighter Phenomenon: A Case Study from the Netherlands”, International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, March 2017, p. 7, <www.icct.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ICCT-Paulussen-Nijman-Lismont-Mental-Health-andthe-Foreign-Fighter-Phenomenon-March-2017.pdf>. 31  R. Frenett and T. Silverman, “Foreign Fighters: Motivations for Travel to Foreign Conflicts”, in FFILB, pp. 63-76, op. cit., note 14. Also see: Phil Gurski, Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), p. 70. Note again that some of these analyses focus on “foreign fighters” not “FTFs”. 32  UNOCT Report July 2017, p. 5, op. cit., note 27. See also J.M. Berger “Making CVE Work: A Focused Approach Based on Process Disruption”, International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (hereafter, J.M. Berger “Making CVE Work: A Focused Approach Based on Process Disruption”), May 2016, which concludes: “There are obvious risks in arguing for single-issue causation in settings where multiple variables are at play.” 14 Guidelines for Addressing the Threats and Challenges of “Foreign Terrorist Fighters”