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Recommendation 1969 (2011)
Unaccompanied children in Europe: issues of arrival, stay and return
1. The Parliamentary Assembly refers
to its Resolution 1810
(2011) on unaccompanied children in Europe: issues of
arrival, stay and return.
2. It recalls the important role that the Council of Europe has
played in rendering child rights and child protection more visible
in migration policy discussions around Europe, and in providing
practical tools for addressing the situation of unaccompanied children,
in particular through developing life projects for unaccompanied
migrant minors, such as Committee of Ministers Recommendation CM/Rec(2007)9,
which is a unique tool providing unaccompanied children with meaningful
and lasting solutions.
3. The Assembly considers that the Council of Europe should continue
to play a prominent role by helping to create a viable and harmonised
Europe-wide protection system for unaccompanied children. In this
respect, the Council of Europe should closely co-operate with the
European Commission on the implementation of the European Union
Action Plan on Unaccompanied Minors and on the further identification
of, and the closing up of, gaps in the legal protection of this
vulnerable group. The Council of Europe should also work with other relevant
European Union institutions on harmonising data collection systems
and asylum procedures applicable to unaccompanied children in Europe.
4. In light of the above, the Assembly invites the Committee
of Ministers to:
4.1. take note
of the Assembly’s recommendations to member states set out in its
above-mentioned resolution and urge member states to comply with
them;
4.2. urge member states to comply with General Comment No.
6 by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, the
relevant guidelines adopted by the Office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNICEF, Save the Children,
the Separated Children in Europe Programme (SCEP) and other international
organisations, and notably with the UNHCR 2008 Guidelines on Determining
the Best Interests of the Child, the UNHCR 2009 Guidelines on Child
Asylum Claims and the fourth version of the SCEP Statement of Good
Practice (2010);
4.3. instruct the relevant body within the Council of Europe
to set up a working group comprising government experts, members
of civil society and representatives of relevant international organisations and
Council of Europe bodies to examine further the 15 common principles,
as presented in Resolution 1810 (2011), with a view to elaborating
Council of Europe guiding principles on the protection of unaccompanied
children in the form of a new recommendation by the Committee of
Ministers;
4.4. fully integrate issues related to unaccompanied children
into the transversal project “Building a Europe for and with children”
under its current strategy 2006-2011 and into any future activities undertaken
within the framework of this programme; in particular, in this context,
contribute to the development of common guidelines on the assessment
of the best interests of the child, on the legal guardianship of
unaccompanied children, age assessment and on the application of
child-friendly justice in the context of unaccompanied children;
4.5. find resources for implementing life projects for unaccompanied
minors as a valuable tool for finding durable solutions for them;
designate a single interlocutor within the Council of Europe to
ensure the co-ordination and follow-up of the problem of unaccompanied
children in all of the Organisation’s member states and, in the
context of the ongoing reform process, ensure that the fate of unaccompanied children
is sufficiently taken into account in any future intergovernmental
action of the Council of Europe;
4.6. encourage member states to submit projects to the Council
of Europe Development Bank with a view to funding or co-funding
life projects for unaccompanied children.