Lost in Transit. Insufficient Protection for Unaccompanied Migrant Children at Roissy Charles de Gaulle Airport
- Document number
- 2398
- Date
- 2009
- Title
- Lost in Transit. Insufficient Protection for Unaccompanied Migrant Children at Roissy Charles de Gaulle Airport
- Author/publisher
- Human Rights Watch (HRW)
- Availability
- View/save PDF version of this document
- Document type(s)
- Research/Study/Analysis,
- Keywords
- Child Trafficking, Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, Best Interests Principle, Child Victims of Trafficking, Separated Migrant Children, Unaccompanied minors, Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Child protection systems, Family reunification, Guardian, Family Tracing, Age Assessment, Freedom from Detention, Interim Care, Integration, Adoption,
- Summary
- From January 2008 to July 2009 around 1,500 migrant children arrived without a care-giver or parent at Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and were denied entry. Physically present within France's geographical borders, but yet not "in" France according to French law, these children were detained by police in the so-called airport transit zone. Some of these children were trafficked, some were fleeing persecution in their home countries, and some were arriving to join family members. But instead of receiving protection, they faced degrading treatment by police, detention with adults, little protection from traffickers, barriers to filing asylum, and a rapid screening system procedurally stacked against children being able to properly make a claim to stay in France. Around 30 percent were subsequently deported to their country of origin or to a country through which they had transited on their journey to France, regardless of whether they had family or any ties there, or continued their journey to an onward destination. The others were granted access to France.
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