27 November 2015

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) has released a new handbook that aims to raise awareness and improve the knowledge of the legal standards that protect and promote children’s rights in Europe.

Among the range of substantive issues the publication covers, FRA illustrates the provisions that cover children in a range of migration situations, and the conventions that support migrant, refugee, and asylum-seeking children’s rights to family reunification, access to justice, and ongoing residence in the host state.

Noting that in the context of international protection procedures, children are regarded as ‘vulnerable persons’, FRA restates that states are required to identify and accommodate any special provision that asylum-seeking children might need when they enter a host state. The handbook also emphasises that European law authorises the detention of children in an immigration context only as a measure of last resort, and that national authorities are obliged to place children in appropriate alternative accommodation.

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This article appeared in the ECRE Weekly Bulletin of 27 November 2015. You can subscribe to the Weekly Bulletin here.