"Then I was enclosed in a small room .... I could see faces of other young people in their own cells. We had a place to sleep, a cell, very hot, it had a toilet. My heart started to race in the room. I was worried. I didn't know what was going to happen to me". These are the words of a seventeen-year-old boy who fled gang violence in El Salvador only to find himself in a detention centre in Texas. His experience, and that of the thousands of other children who cross borders unaccompanied every year in search of protection, is explored in a new international study, Seeking Asylum Alone. This international comparative report describes the nature and scale of the migration of unaccompanied and separated children, the complex and unsatisfactory policies and procedures which funnel children through an adversarial system that frequently ignores their best interests and violates their human rights, and the range of remedies available to children. Drawing on government data, court proceedings and hundreds of interviews with officials, advocates and the children themselves, the report highlights serious deficiencies in current practice. It documents the inadequacy of current data collection, the hurdles children face in getting access to a place of safety, the inadequacies of reception, detention, and care systems, the severe limitations on legal representation and due process, and the unsatisfactory state of final protection outcomes. The report arrives at two general conclusions. One is that the serious protection deficits highlighted by the data require urgent rectification: children should be treated as children first and non-citizens or aliens second, if states' human rights obligations are going to be met. The second conclusion is that many unaccompanied or separated children have a stronger claim to asylum under international law than is generally recognized, and that child specific persecution should be investigated more seriously and systematically: legal actors should substitute for their adult centred lens a more child centred focus. The recommendations that follow from these conclusions can, the report argues, be implemented relatively easily and economically, with more systematic training and monitoring, and without jeopardizing states' migration management programs.Directed by two law professors, Jacqueline Bhabha, a lecturer at Harvard Law School, and Mary Crock, an associate professor at Sydney Law School, the two year comparative research project documents the circumstances and treatment of unaccompanied and separated child asylum seekers in three key destination countries, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. The study has resulted in four substantial research reports, one on each of the three countries in which research was conducted, and this fourth generic and comparative report, which brings together all the country specific findings. All the reports are now accessible on-line at: http://www.humanrights.harvard.edu; and at www.law.usyd.edu.au/sciglAlso available Seeking Asylum Alone - A study of Australian law, policy and practice regarding unaccompanied and separated children, by Mary Crock.

Unaccompanied and separated children continue to be caught up in programs to deflect unauthorised Australian boat arrivals to offshore processing centres. If such children do make it to Australia, the processes for identifying children travelling alone are inadequate, with too much reliance placed on the self-identification of such children. No child victim of trafficking has been identified in Australia since 1994. Australia's refugee status determination system was established with adult asylum seekers as the norm. Children face obvious disadvantage in both articulating their story and in being heard. At the crucial first point of contact with authorities children are required to articulate their need for protection without either an advisor or an effective guardian. Case studies of children within the asylum process also suggest that immigration officials and officials at appellate level have been poorly trained and have lacked the skills to deal with child asylum seekers with appropriate sensitivity. Another barrier faced by these children is legal: questions remain as to how well the international definition of refugee has been read to accommodate the particular experiences of children. It is hoped that this report will encourage Australian officials to think seriously about children as refugees in their own right - most particularly when the children are travelling alone.This Report was funded by the MacArthur Foundation (Chicago), the Australian Research Council and the Myer Foundation.Also available Seeking Asylum Alone - A Comparative Study- Unaccompanied and Separated Children and Refugee Protection in Australia, the UK and the US, by Jacqueline Bhabha and Mary Crock.

Children are the victims of some of the most devastating examples of state-sanctioned and private human rights abuse. In increasing numbers, they are attempting to find international protection, and are forced to navigate complex administrative and legal processes that fail to take into account their distinct needs and vulnerabilities. The key challenges they face in establishing entitlement to refugee protection are their invisibility and the risk of incorrect assessment. Drawing on an extensive and original analysis of jurisprudence of leading common law jurisdictions, this book undertakes an assessment of the extent to which these challenges may be overcome by greater engagement between international refugee law and international law on the rights of the child. The result is the first comprehensive study on the manner in which these two mutually reinforcing legal regimes can interact to strengthen the protection of refugee children.

The book looks at refugee and asylum policies of Australia, Canada and New Zealand in light of current debates on globalisation and citizenship. The resettlement of refugees was a by product of the Cold War, coupled with a quest on to boost populations and to fulfil labour shortages. The pressures of global restructuring have resulted in a reformulation of refugee policies. The once humanitarian responses have been converted into policies of containment, with increased controls to prevent the arrival of asylum seekers. Measures imposed have resulted in barriers for asylum seekers and exclusion by nation states by reference to national sovereignty and security. The authors stress that so called 'illegal migration' is primarily related to the political and economic structures across the world, primacy of transnational capital. Border controls and interdiction measures are bound to fail as they reinforce this divide.The authors call for the entrenchment of rights firmly into the Refugee Convention as well as the development of a new form of citizenship, where citizenship and belonging is not embedded in a single nation.

The human and political problems presented by refugees and asylum are acute and are not improving. This is reflected in international concern and the existence of a treaty framework. The emergent body of refugee law is an amalgam of international, regional and national rules and procedures. But it is national law and practice, particularly with regard to immigration, which in reality determines an individual's right to asylum. The key to a true appreciation and understanding of the plight of refugees and the extent of their current rights therefore lies in national law and practice.