%0 Journal Article
%@ 0938-5428
%A Ioffe, Yulia
%A Viterbo, Hedi
%D 2024
%F discovery:10183550
%I Oxford University Press
%J European Journal of International law
%T No Refuge from Childhood: How Child Protection Harms Refugees
%U https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10183550/
%X This article sheds new and critical light on the notion, enshrined in international  law, that child refugees are a uniquely vulnerable and dependent age group  requiring special protection. Although protection is not inherently detrimental,  this conception of child protection harms refugees of all ages. It casts adult  refugees as less vulnerable, less dependent and less deserving of protection than  their younger counterparts. It downplays the contextual, relational and socially  constructed nature of vulnerability, dependence and childhood. It contributes to  the disregard for the capacity and wishes of child refugees. It affords these  children only temporary protection, thereby increasing their uncertainty, driving  them to disengage from welfare services and incentivizing the state to delay  decisions about their entitlements. Meanwhile, international law enshrines child–  parent relations but also authorizes the punishment of supposedly unfit parents,  and this ambivalence helps states weaponize legal principles of child protection  against refugee parents and their children. These issues symptomize broader  problems in international human rights law, international child law and  international refugee law. Therefore, a fundamental reimagining of protection and  deservingness is needed: a shift from dichotomies of vulnerability, dependence  and deservingness toward free global movement based on solidarity and equity.
%Z This version is the author-accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.