Challenges for the Protection of Migrant Children. The Right to Identity and the Age of Unaccompanied Minors Arriving at European Borders

This paper sheds light on human rights violations suffered by unaccompanied migrant minors in Europe. In fact, notwithstanding the safeguards established by international conventions and European legal provisions (both within the Council of Europe and the European Union), this category of migrants is often not satisfactorily protected by European domestic authorities. This occurs because at times European domestic officers disregard age as attested by foreign official identity documents and because domestic procedures aimed at assessing age are conspicuously carried out in contrast with international and European safeguards, as highlighted by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the European Court of Human Rights. This paper suggests that, even in the lack of an express obligation, a duty to take foreign identity documents into consideration flows from international and European human rights laws; moreover, these legal safeguards should – quite urgently – shape domestic age assessment procedures. © Arianna Vettorel, 2024.