Ioffe, Yulia;
Viterbo, Hedi;
(2024)
No Refuge from Childhood: How Child Protection Harms Refugees.
European Journal of International law
10.1093/ejil/chae055.
(In press).
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Abstract
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.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | No Refuge from Childhood: How Child Protection Harms Refugees |
| DOI: | 10.1093/ejil/chae055 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chae055 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author-accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Inst for Risk and Disaster Reduction |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10183550 |
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