III.4.6 Unaccompanied children

Main Debates

  • Who is responsible for safeguarding the special protection needs of unaccompanied minors?
  • What kind of assistance can ensure the protection of unaccompanied minor refugees?

Main Points

  • Best interests of the child
  • Duties of host states v. role of UNHCR and implementing NGOs
  • Prospects of durable solutions

Soft Law

  1. Accra Declaration on War-Affected Children in West Africa, ECOWAS Member States, Accra, April 2000.

UNHCR Documents

  1. UNHCR, Handbook for the Protection of Women and Girls, January 2008.
  2. UNHCR, Working with Men and Boy Survivors of Sexual and Gender-based Violence in Forced Displacement, July 2012.
  3. UNHCR, Action against Sexual and Gender-Based Violence: An Updated Strategy, June 2011.

Readings

Core

  1. T. Kaime, ‘From Lofty Jargon to Durable Solutions: Unaccompanied Refugee Children and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child’, International Journal of Refugee Law, (2004) vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 336-348.
  2. A. Macdonald, ‘Protection Responses to Unaccompanied and Separated Refugee Children in Mixed Migration’, Refugee Survey Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 4 (2008), pp. 48-62.
  3. T. Schreier, ‘Critical Challenges to Protecting Unaccompanied and Separated Foreign Children in the Western Cape: Lessons Learned at the University of Cape Town Refugee Rights Unit’, Refuge, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 61-75.
  4. M. S. Gallagher, ‘Soldier Boy Bad: Child Soldiers, Culture and Bars to Asylum’, International Journal of Refugee Law, vol. 13, no. 3 (2001), pp. 310–353.
  5. G. Goodwin-Gill, The Refugee in International Law, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 356–358.
  6. UNHCR, Refugee Children in Africa: Trends and Patterns in the Refugee Population in Africa Below the Age of 18 Years, 2001.
  7. UNHCR, Refugee Children: Guidelines on Protection and Care, 1994.

Extended

  1. I. Palmary, For Better Implementation of Migrant Children’s Rights in South Africa, (Wits University: African Centre for Migration and Society, 2009).
  2. V. Mayer, et al, ‘Protecting the Most Vulnerable: Using the Existing Policy Framework to Strengthen Protection for Refugee Children’ in J. Handmaker and L. A. De La Hunt (eds), Advancing Refugee Protection in South Africa, (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), pp. 186-213.
  3. C. French et al, ‘The Plight of Zimbabwean Unaccompanied Refugee Minors in South Africa: A Call for Comprehensive Legislative Action’, Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, vol 8. no. 4.
  4. B. Harrell-Bond, ‘Are refugee camps good for children?’ New Issues in Refugee Research, Working Paper no. 29, August 2000.