TY  - INPR
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chae055
TI  - No Refuge from Childhood: How Child Protection Harms Refugees
N2  - 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.
PB  - Oxford University Press
Y1  - 2024/12/10/
A1  - Ioffe, Yulia
A1  - Viterbo, Hedi
ID  - discovery10183550
SN  - 0938-5428
N1  - This version is the author-accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher?s terms and conditions.
JF  - European Journal of International law
AV  - restricted
ER  -