All children have rights. It is obvious and yet so incredibly difficult. Read about ECRE:s report on how law can be both a substantial barrier and an enabling tool for undocumented migrant families accessing basic social rights. Here it is: http://picum.org/picum.org/uploads/publication/Children%20First%20and%20Foremost.pdf
PICUM:s newly finished follow up-report on access to basic rights for undocumented migrant children in Europe reveals great discrepancies between legislative entitlements and main practical barriers as regards education, healthcare and housing. Also the Right to have a legal identity, birth registration, where there is a clear lack of policy attention, is discussed in the report.
The report first presents an accessible description of the international agreements that entitles children rights in these areas. A conclusion is that campaigning action tends to be most successful when national legislation falls short in practice, but when national legislation omits legal protection to a certain right, advocacy action must be brought to first create a legal protection. There is also a guide on how to take legal action in ECRE:s report.
The national legislation in seven EU member states were studied; Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and the UK. Moreover in each of these states workshops were held to develop strategies to overcome the challenges identified. There are a few things I believe are especially noteworthy in the report, from the perspective of challenges in decreasing the gap between rights on paper and access to rights for undocumented migrants in Sweden:
First of all, as regards health care, the report refers to Article 3 in the European Convention for human rights, stating that “No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”, and to the case of Pretty v UK where the European court of Human Rights found that “the suffering which flows from naturally occurring illness, physical or mental, may be covered by Article 3, where it is, or risks being, exacerbated by treatment…for which the authorities can be held responsible.”
As regards the right to housing a comprehensive right encapsulating access to appropriate, secure, and sustainable accommodation (established under international law in UDHR art 25, CRC art 27(3), ICESCR art 11(1), ECHR art 8, the European Social Charter art 31, and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union art 34) the studied national legislations legislative frameworks exclude undocumented families from social (state subsidised) housing:
“Of all rights, undocumented families’ right to access housing is least protected in national legislation. in fact, no national legislation in any European member state explicitly protects undocumented children’s right to shelter or housing” (ECRE 2013: 79).
Italy and the UK who previously offered social assistance in the form of housing allowance to vulnerable undocumented families at risk of destitution, have progressively removed any assistance. At the same time it is also found that in the UK the law places legal duties on local authorities to provide accommodation support in specific circumstances including for undocumented families. Local authorities have a duty to provide accommodation support to avoid a breach of human rights.
A social enterprice in the UK called ‘Apps for Good’ offers classes is ‘Stop and Search.’ This is a mobile application designed to make stop and search a transparent and fair process. In the UK the police have the authority to stop people and ask them to identify themselves, or proceed to search them. The procedure makes young people feel disempowered, criminalised and confused. The mobile application allows users to learn about their legal rights under the stop and account and stop and search procedures. Using easy to understand pictograms, users can quickly understand what rights they have in law and so, not feel intimidated or confused should they be subject to such a procedure. The application has an added feature to allow users to log their experience into the centralised database. This involves rating their experience and providing simple, key data on themselves so that the application can analyse, draw patterns from and map stop and searches in the UK. Finally the application provides information to users on lodging a complaint against the police. The application could easily be developed to include rights in detention centres and contacts to lawyers and migrants’ rights groups.
A final section in the report is about regularisation as a strategy. Why do we need regularisation of irregularity and how can we do it?
I will get back to these questions,
Anna