This ongoing project examines how children’s rights are addressed in the EU’s new Migration and Asylum Pact, adopted in May 2024, which comprises several new legal instruments of direct relevance to children in the asylum process. The reform package includes, inter alia, rules on screening, asylum procedures, reception conditions, and border return procedures—areas in which children are particularly likely to be affected.
Although the EU has maintained that the Pact will lead to enhanced protection for children, both those accompanied by family members and unaccompanied minors, the reform has attracted extensive criticism from civil society organisations and researchers. This policy brief therefore asks how the child rights perspective, as enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, is reflected in the legal instruments forming part of the EU Migration and Asylum Pact. This question is important both from a broader child rights perspective and from a national perspective, as each Member State is bound by both the Charter and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The policy brief provides an overall assessment of how children’s rights are addressed within the Pact as a whole, as well as a shorter analysis of the potential implications of the new rules for children in the Swedish asylum context. The study adopts a rights-based approach and is based on a critical doctrinal legal analysis of EU law, Swedish legislation, preparatory works, and previous assessments conducted by, inter alia, civil society organisations.
The author of this publication is Rebecca Thorburn Stern, Professor of Public International Law at Uppsala University.
Picture: Kateryna Hliznitsova via Unsplash.