Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw, September 18, 2018; 13.15-14.45; Room 2.
Participants of the side event ‘CHILDREN IN EURASIA: LOOKING FOR THE REAL ALTERNATIVE TO IMMIGRATION DETENTION’ will discuss the efforts to humanize the system of children’s transit and possible alternatives to children immigration detention in the region.
Children are a big part of mass migration in the region of the ex-USSR. Minors in migration face most risks – except of all the other dangers – they might be deprived of the right to education, get separated from their family, detained in closed institutions. Immigration detention of children has recently been recognized as a global problem and condemned by the UN CRC and the UN CMW; the Council of Europe has urged all countries to put an end to this unacceptable practice.
Meanwhile, in Eurasia both international agreements and in national migration laws mostly ignore the children as a group in need for special protective measures. Their return to the countries of origin is still regulated by the outdated Chisinau Agreement (on cooperation of the CIS states on the return of minors to countries of their permanent residence, 2002).
Some countries are in process of reforms aiming to humanize the system of children’s transit,while often migrant children are still detained either in police detention centers or in social institutions, which children can’t leave, where they are not free to accept visits of their relatives or even independent observers.