The Council of Europe HELP course on Refugee and Migrant Children was launched in Paris on 3 June 2019 for French lawyers. To mark this event, a launching seminar was organised jointly with the Conseil National des Barreaux (CNB), the Délégation des Barreaux de France (DBF) and the Representation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to the European Institutions in Strasbourg.
The course has been developed and launched jointly in 2018 with the Office of the Special Representative of the Council of Europe Secretary General on Migration and Refugees (SRSG) and is one of the measures implementing the Council of Europe Action Plan on protecting Refugee and Migrant Children in Europe (2017-2019). Thirty French lawyers will follow the course for the next three months.
Beatrice Voss, President of the Commission for Freedom and Human Rights of the CNB, welcomed the participants and underlined the importance of the protection of refugee and migrant children and the need for French lawyers to become better acquainted with and to apply the European standards in this area. Participants were introduced to the Council of Europe HELP program, in particular to recent courses and activities on migration and asylum, by Eva Pastrana, Head of the Council of Europe HELP Unit. Irene Kitsou-Milonas, Adviser, Private Office of the Council of Europe Secretary General and of the Deputy Secretary General, provided an overview of the role of the Council of Europe in this field and addressed in particular key relevant cases from the European Court of Human Rights, the findings of the SRSG’s mission reports with emphasis on the need to overcome challenges related to coordination among various authorities involved, as well as current standard setting work of the Council of Europe related to refugee and migrant children.
Participants also benefited from three high-quality thematic presentations. Children who are forced to flee, often in an irregular manner, remain one of the most vulnerable groups in Europe. Around 33,800 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children arrived in the European Union in 2016, compared to around 20,000 in 2017 and around 4,600 in the first half of 2018. While this total number is decreasing, the proportion of unaccompanied children asylum seekers is increasing, from 34% in 2016 to 60% in 2017.
In this context, Sadaf Soofi, the UNHCR's Protection Associate in France, presented a study published in December 2018 by UNHCR, which draws on the testimonies of unaccompanied children and is focused on taking into account their best interest in all stages of their care in France. In particular, UNHCR has been focused on providing access to international protection for these young people and has therefore highlighted the need to better identify unaccompanied children, to inform them about their rights and to evaluate their needs, taking into account their best interests, in particular with regard to international protection.
Delphine Leneutre, Legal Associate at the UNHCR Representation to the European Institutions in Strasbourg, presented the recent case law of the European Court of Human Rights concerning the protection of refugee children and migrants in detention including the third party interventions of the UNHCR before the Strasbourg Court; and gave an overview of the European context, international standards and the reality of alternatives to immigration detention. Nathalie Lequeux, Legal Officer in charge of the Défenseur des droits Child Rights Unit, examined the challenges posed by the new French assessment procedure for minors following the adoption of the Decree of 30 January 2019 concerning assessment methods for persons declaring themselves to be minors and temporarily or permanently deprived of the protection of their family, and authorizing the creation of a biometric file of persons claiming to be unaccompanied minors, known in France under the name of "AEM file (Support to minority assessment)”, as well as recent developments in departmental practices in this area.
Finally, Marie Traquini, the course tutor and a lawyer at the DBF in Brussels, introduced participants to the structure, content, course and learning objectives of the course.
This course aims to address the ways international and European legal frameworks deal with various current issues in this field, while giving an overview of the case law of the ECtHR. It enables legal professionals and other interested persons to improve their knowledge and skills on the existing standards and to apply them in their daily work. The course covers the following modules:
- Introduction to the legal framework
- Child-friendly procedures
- Alternatives to detention
- Family reunification
- Social rights and integration
- Guardianship
- Age assessment
The participants were also able to engage in a roundtable and extensive debate with the speakers and their colleagues, on a wide range of issues on the protection of Refugee and Migrant Children in France and Europe. They shared their expectations and first hand experiences and the practical, legal, and procedural challenges they may face.
The course Refugee and Migrant Children is available on the HELP online platform in English and will be available in Arabic, Azerbaijani, French, Greek, Italian, Spanish and Turkish.
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