Unaccompanied Children in the Danish Asylum Process: Experiences from Legal Counselling of and Assistance to Children
Author(s): E. Green
According to the statistics of the Red Cross, Denmark has received 196 and 319 unaccompanied minors in 1998 and 1999 respectively. This report is based on experiences from the counselling of and legal assistance to children, interviews with the teaching staff at the centres, interviews with representatives of the Red Cross and psychologists at the Danish Red Cross and the Rehabilitation Centre for Torture Victims respectively. The first section of the report is a description of the psychosocial condition of the unaccompanied minors and the motivating factors of the Danish Refugee Council to set up specific support for this group of asylum seekers. It mainly discusses psychological conditions in terms of separation, experience of traumas, developmental consequences, psychosomatic symptoms, feigned identity and precondition for successful identity-process. The second section compiles the experiences of the legal and social condition of the children during the asylum procedure and is illustrated with individual cases from the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, e.g. return to another country, experiences from counselling and general comments on access, age assessment, decision on maturity, form-filling and interviews and permission to stay as an unaccompanied minor. In addition, the report explores practices and procedures of guardianship in the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway. The report concludes that changes in the process of assessing unaccompanied minors are urgently needed, such as the appointment of a guardian and a lawyer to the children and development of methodology in interviewing children.