• Caught in a Net: Unaccompanied Migrant Children in Europe

    Unaccompanied migrant children are some of the most vulnerable in Europe, subject to detention and brutality, unable to access their rights to education, health care, or to seek asylum, and left without adequate legal protections in domestic legal systems throughout the continent.1 One might think that in Western Europe, where child mortality is close to zero, and social services and institutions well developed, children’s rights would be more secure. Not, however, when the children in question are unaccompanied migrants.

    All too often the thousands of unaccompanied children arriving without parents or caregivers find themselves trapped in their status as migrants, with European governments giving little consideration to their vulnerabilities and needs as children. Many end up without the humane treatment Europe claims to stand for. Instead they may face exploitation, prolonged detention, intimidation and abusive police behavior, registration and treatment as adults after unreliable age exams, bureaucratic obstacles to accessing education, and abuse when detained or housed in institutions.

    Read the publication, "Caught in a Net: Unaccompanied Migrant Children in Europe" through the link below.

    Caught in a Net - Unaccompanied Migrant Children in Europe

  • Australia: End Offshore Transfer of Migrant Children
    Nov 24, 2012
    The Australian government should immediately stop transfers of migrant children - including unaccompanied migrant children and child asylum seekers - to offshore processing sites in Manus Island of Papua New Guinea, and Nauru.
  • Iraq/Turkey: Open Borders to All Syrian Refugees
    Oct 14, 2012
    The Iraqi and Turkish authorities should immediately re-open border crossings where more than 10,000 Syrians have been stranded for weeks and allow all those wishing to seek asylum to cross without delay.
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Refugees and Migrants

  • Australia: End Offshore Transfer of Migrant Children
    Nov 24, 2012
    The Australian government should immediately stop transfers of migrant children - including unaccompanied migrant children and child asylum seekers - to offshore processing sites in Manus Island of Papua New Guinea, and Nauru.
  • Letter to Parliamentary Joint Human Rights Committee
    Oct 26, 2012
  • EU, as peacemaker, should welcome those fleeing war
    Oct 16, 2012
    Human Rights Watch gives its view of the award of the Nobel peace prize to the European Union.
  • Iraq/Turkey: Open Borders to All Syrian Refugees
    Oct 14, 2012
    The Iraqi and Turkish authorities should immediately re-open border crossings where more than 10,000 Syrians have been stranded for weeks and allow all those wishing to seek asylum to cross without delay.
  • Thailand: Refugee Policies Ad Hoc and Inadequate
    Sep 13, 2012

    Thailand’s policies governing refugees on its soil are making them vulnerable to arbitrary and abusive treatment despite the country’s decades of experience as host for millions of refugees.

  • UN Human Rights Council: Statement on the Situation of the Rohingya in Burma, and on the Situation Throughout Mali
    Sep 9, 2012
    Human Rights Watch shares the High Commissioner's concerns about serious ongoing abuses in Arakan and Kachin State in Burma. The Rohingya situation, as well as serious abuses arising out of the ethnic armed conflict in Kachin State, reinforce the need for the Government to invite the High Commissioner's office to set up an office in the country. Human Rights Watch is also concerned about the continuing deterioration of the human rights situation throughout Mali and urges the Human Rights Council to encourage OHCHR to set up a presence in the country and to continue to report on the situation in the country as a whole.
  • Giving refugees hope beyond the camps
    Sep 9, 2012

    After years of seemingly never-ending conflict and repression, Myanmar's neighbours and the world are watching the changes there with interest and cautious optimism. And for the 140,000 Myanmar refugees in Thailand, many stuck in camps on the border for decades, there is now some hope that they might be able to go home.

  • Egypt: End Sinai Nightmare for Migrants
    Sep 5, 2012
    Egypt should use its increased security force presence in the Sinai Peninsula to free hundreds of migrants held for ransom and abused by human traffickers and other criminals. Security forces should detain, investigate, and prosecute the traffickers.
  • Guilty of Adulthood Until Proven a Child
    Aug 13, 2012
    A typical child wants to be seen as an adult. Unfortunately, some children who seek asylum in the European Union (EU) through the tiny island nation of Malta find themselves with the opposite problem: needing to prove they are children. Children who arrive without an adult caregiver, all too often following a perilous sea journey, may find themselves detained and treated as adults until administrative proceedings show otherwise. Often detained with actual adults, these children have no access to education or other necessary services.
  • Children trapped in the EU's web
    Jul 18, 2012
    I first met Labaan, an 18-year-old Somali boy with a slight figure and a well-styled mohawk, this February, in Malta. Labaan left Somalia when he was 15, shortly after his father was killed. He travelled north by himself, taking months to make his way over land through Sudan and Libya. Eventually, he boarded a rickety boat with about 100 other migrants, and after days at sea, without much water or food, reached Malta.
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