The Council of Europe’s anti-torture Committee (CPT) has restated its position in a newly-published fact sheet that every effort should be made to avoid resorting to the deprivation of liberty of an irregular migrant who is a child, and stated that member States should not detain unaccompanied or separated children.
The fact sheet provides a compilation of the CPT’s standards on immigration detention that have been developed over the course of the Committee’s monitoring activity, and their standards build on legal principles originating from international instruments, such as the European Convention on Human Rights, the Committee of Minister’s Twenty Guidelines on Forced Returns, and relevant United Nations treaties.
In a section on vulnerable persons and children, the standards of the CPT call, in particular, for the provision of alternatives to detention and appropriate care for children and vulnerable categories of people; and the appointment of a guardian or legal representative to any unaccompanied or separated child deprived of their liberty.