Child rights bodies call for new approach to EU migrant detention

A number of children’s rights advocacy bodies have joined a group of 53 organisations across Europe in raising concerns over proposed new Council of Europe rules for the administrative detention of migrants. The group says that a fundamentally different approach is needed to stop the abuse of human rights. Adrian Voce reports.

The group says it wants to ‘express our collective concern that a fundamentally different approach is needed if the draft codifying instrument is to truly reflect the minimum human rights standards to which migrants are entitled’. The statement proposes changes in five broad areas, proposing: a fundamentally different regime; reinforcement of a broader set of fundamental human rights; clarification that administrative immigration detention is never acceptable for particularly vulnerable migrants, including children; the adoption, as an urgent priority, of alternative measures to detention; strengthening of safeguards to the access of immigration detention centres for independent monitors.

Adrian Voce


The Joint Statement to the European Committee on Legal Co-Operation of the Council of Europe on the codification of European Rules for the Conditions of Administrative Detention of Migrants can be downloaded here

Author: Adrian Voce

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