Rights of the Child Realizing the Rights of the Child and Family Reunification

Calls upon States to consider ratifying the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocols thereto, and calls for renewed efforts towards their full implementation by all parties;

Also calls upon States to take all measures necessary to ensure full respect for and the protection and fulfilment of the rights of the child, without discrimination of any kind, giving particular attention to the right to, as far as possible, know and be cared for by his or her parents and the right to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations, as recognized by law, without unlawful interference, and taking positive measures to prevent family separation, including by reuniting separated family members, unless such separation is necessary for the best interests of the child, and refraining from actions that may constitute arbitrary or unlawful interference with family life;

Urges States to put into place, if they have not yet done so, appropriate legislation, policies, systems and procedures to ensure that the best interests of the child are a primary consideration in all actions affecting children, including those who may become or who have been separated from their families, and in all decisions taken relating to their family reunification, regardless of the child’s status, including in the context of cross-border migration;

Encourages States to take further actions to support family reunification, unless it is not in the best interests of the child, taking into account that many children living without parental care have families, including at least one living parent and/or other living relatives;

Calls upon States to enhance policy coherence with respect to family reunification by reviewing relevant laws, policies and procedures, placing particular priority on the prevention of family separation;

Urges States to take effective measures to address existing barriers to efficient, transparent, child-friendly and age-, disability- and gender-responsive family reunification procedures, including by facilitating access to application processing and consular services, accelerating proceedings, providing all necessary information in a timely, accessible and child-friendly manner and by working towards easing financial burdens, taking into account that having insufficient financial resources should not prevent family reunification;

Urges States to strengthen child welfare and child protection systems and to improve care reform efforts, which should include increased multisectoral collaboration and comprehensive intersectoral policies between, inter alia, the child protection system and the welfare authorities in charge of health, food security and nutrition, education, justice, immigration, law enforcement and gender equality, and the active coordination among all relevant authorities and to improve cross-border cooperation, capacity-building and training programmes for relevant stakeholders and to enhance mechanisms to hold accountable those who profit from exploitation, including child labour, the sale of children and child trafficking;

Also urges States to take all appropriate and reasonable measures necessary to prevent businesses from causing or contributing to abuses of children’s rights in the context of migration, and calls upon all business enterprises to meet their responsibility to respect the rights of the child by undertaking child rights due diligence, appropriate to their size, the risk of severe impact and the context of their operation, as outlined in the recommendations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child in its general comment No. 16 (2013) on State obligations regarding the impact of the business sector on children’s rights, the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the International Labour Organization Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy, and the Children’s Rights and Business Principles;

Calls upon all States to protect refugee, asylum-seeking, migrant and internally displaced children, in particular those who are unaccompanied or separated from their families, who are particularly exposed to violence, abuses and risks in connection with armed conflict and trafficking in persons, and to continue to pay more systematic and in-depth attention to the provision of trauma-informed, gender-, age- and disability-specific assistance and protection in response to the development needs of those children through, inter alia, screening for protection concerns, including the proactive identification of children who are victims of trafficking, programmes aimed at rehabilitation, education and physical and psychological recovery and, where appropriate and feasible, local integration and resettlement, to give priority to family tracing and family reunification and reintegration and, where appropriate, to cooperate with international humanitarian and refugee organizations, as well as with child protection actors in disarmament, demobilization and reintegration processes;

Urges States to ensure that equal rights and appropriate standards of protection are provided to every child, including those above 15 years of age, regardless of their migration or other status, in accordance with their obligations under international law;

Also urges States to ensure the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health to all children, without discrimination of any kind and regardless of their status, including but not limited to sexual and reproductive health and psychosocial health, throughout their life course, and to redouble efforts to prevent, respond to and eliminate all forms of violence, online and offline, including sexual and gender-based violence and domestic violence, and all forms of exploitation and neglect and harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation;

Further urges States to ensure that children have access to justice and timely, effective, inclusive and gender-, disability- and age-responsive remedies when their rights are violated in the context of cross-border migration, and to uphold child-sensitive due process guarantees in administrative and judicial proceedings related to family reunification and separation, taking into account the best interests of the child as a primary consideration and that the child shall be provided the opportunity to be heard in such proceedings, either directly or through a representative or an appropriate body, in a manner consistent with the procedural rules of national law, and to provide the child with relevant information concerning violations and reparation mechanisms, access to effective legal representation and assistance for children and, where relevant, for and through their parents, caregivers and legal guardians;

Urges States to comply with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law, particularly the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocols thereto, emphasizing the importance of accountability for all violations and abuses of the rights of the child;

Calls upon States to continue to foster international cooperation to tackle the existing gaps with respect to family reunification, strengthen family tracing and enhance policy coherence and the availability and accessibility of safe and regular family reunification processes, and to provide universal access to functioning civil registration systems, taking into account that the collection, use and retention of, and access to, children’s personal data, in particular biometric data, should comply with strict enforcement of appropriate rules thereon and shall be consistent with States’ obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child;

Also calls upon States to take appropriate measures to respond to the separation of children from their families in cross-border migration settings, including humanitarian contexts, inter alia, by giving priority to family tracing and family reunification and reintegration and, where appropriate, by strengthening cooperation with international humanitarian and refugee organizations, in line with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law;

Calls upon States to use alternatives to the detention of migrant children, including by promoting the use of non-custodial solutions implemented by competent child protection actors engaging with the child and, where applicable, his or her family;

Urges States to undertake a preventive approach to family separation in the context of migration by ensuring that no child is subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her family, and that children have the protection of the law against such interference and can fully enjoy their right to preserve family relations and grow up in a family environment, including by:

Encourages States to develop effective and accessible family reunification procedures that allow children to migrate in a regular manner and to facilitate access to procedures for family reunification for migrants at all skill levels through appropriate measures;

Calls upon States of origin, transit and destination to find effective and timely responses to the needs of unaccompanied or separated children as soon as they are identified as such, including, where appropriate and feasible, their integration, voluntary and safe return, in keeping with the principles of due process, the best interests of the child and the principle of non-refoulement, in accordance with international law, and urges States to develop agreements that standardize approaches for identifying and implementing sustainable solutions for unaccompanied or separated children, including a procedure for monitoring their return;

Urges States to ensure that children associated, or allegedly associated, with armed groups or terrorist groups are treated primarily as victims, with the best interests of the child as a primary consideration, to consider non-judicial measures as alternatives to prosecution, and alternatives to detention for those accused of crimes, as stipulated in relevant General Assembly resolutions relating to juvenile justice, and to take measures that are focused on rehabilitation and reintegration in an environment that fosters the health, self-respect and dignity of the child, in accordance with relevant provisions of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, in particular the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocol thereto on the involvement of children in armed conflict;

Encourages States to redouble efforts to ensure that children are reunited with their families and communities or integrated into a family and community environment as soon as possible after their release from armed forces or armed groups unless contrary to the best interests of the child, and to invest in measures to decrease stigma and discrimination against children associated or allegedly associated with such forces or groups, including those designated as terrorist groups by the United Nations;

Also encourages States to focus on long-term and sustainable reintegration and rehabilitation opportunities, with special attention paid to programming across the humanitarian-development nexus, for children affected by terrorism and armed conflict that are gender-, disability- and age-responsive, including access to health-care services, psychosocial support and education programmes, as well as to raising awareness and working with communities to avoid the stigmatization of such children and to facilitate their return and family reunification, while taking into account the specific needs of all girls and boys, to contribute to the well-being of children and to sustainable peace and security;

Encourages the special procedures and other human rights mechanisms of the Human Rights Council to continue to integrate a child rights perspective in the implementation of their mandates and to include in their reports information, qualitative analysis and recommendations on the rights of the child, paying attention to the adverse impact of family separation on the full enjoyment of the rights of the child;

Invites all human rights treaty bodies to continue to integrate the rights of the child into their work, in particular into their concluding observations and general comments and recommendations, paying attention to the adverse impact of family separation on the full enjoyment of the rights of the child;

Requests the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to prepare a report on the rights of the child and inclusive social protection, in close cooperation with all relevant stakeholders, including States, the United Nations Children’s Fund, other relevant United Nations bodies and agencies, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, relevant special procedure mandate holders, regional organizations and human rights bodies, national human rights institutions and civil society, including through consultations with children themselves, to make the report available in an accessible and child-friendly format and to present the report to the Human Rights Council at its fifty-fourth session, and requests the Office of the High Commissioner to organize the annual full-day meeting on the rights of the child in 2024 on the theme of the rights of the child and inclusive social protection, and to make the discussion fully accessible to persons with disabilities.