The United Nations Task Force, which comprises all UN agencies, mandates and special mechanisms, has released the advocacy brief "End Immigration Detention of Children" under the coordination of the Special Representative of the Secretary General on Violence against Children.
This document denounces that at least 77 countries have laws and policies that allow children to be detained based on their legal or migratory status, and at least 330,000 children globally per year are deprived of their liberty based on their legal or migratory status, or that of their parents. This number is likely underestimated due to a lack of accurate data. The brief reminds us that “while many countries have committed to end child immigration detention, the reality is that even in some countries where legislation does not support immigration detention, it continues to remain in use.”
In addition, the brief provides an overview of promising practices and lessons learned to end child immigration detention, from different countries such as Canada, Colombia, Mexico and Thailand. Moreover, this document also encourages the implementation of 14 policy actions needed to scale up efforts to end this form of deprivation of liberty, being the most important one the adoption of explicit legal prohibitions of detention of children based on their legal or migratory status and the provision of a legal framework for a wide range of alternatives for unaccompanied and accompanied children and their families.