The Best Interests of the Child Principle in Swedish Asylum Cases: The Marginalization of Children’s Rights

År: 2011

Typ av text: Vetenskaplig artikel (peer reviewed)

Publicerad av:  Journal of Human Rights Practice. 3(1):49

Språk: Engelska

Författare: Anna Lundberg

Antal sidor: 21

Tillgänglig på: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/

Vad texten handlar om 

Artikeln undersöker diskrepansen mellan policy och implementering av principen om barnets bästa, såsom fastslagen i Barnkonventionen, i asylprocessen. Det sker genom en genomgång av olika policydokument å ena sidan, och resonemang i beslut från Migrationsverket (för familjer som fick komplettera muntligt) och intervjuer med handläggare på Migrationsverket å andra sidan. Artikeln bygger på resultaten från ett tvåårigt projekt som löpte 2006-2008 som hette “The Best Interests of the Child – From Words to Deeds”. Texten tar också upp synnerligen ömmande omständigheter och hur det var direkt relaterat till att förtydliga barnets bästa i asylprocessen. 

Viktigaste resultat

“The main finding drawn from the study is that, at the Migration Board, children’s rights are treated as secondary to the national interest of keeping overall migration numbers down.” (abstract)

“Firstly, children were not heard to the extent expected in light of the Swedish legislation, and the children’s individual grounds for asylum were seldom addressed in interviews with them. Secondly, children’s responses were not taken seriously in the assessment of asylum claims. Finally, the ‘best interests’ paragraph in the legislation was mainly used to legitimate rejected asylum applications.” (abstract)

“The Swedish government states in the proposition that it distances itself from an ethnocentric ethos implying that Sweden is always the best place for children to grow up. Consequently, it should not routinely be considered best for children to reside in Sweden, regardless of linguistic, cultural and national background. A child’s psychological development, states the government, is not necessarily damaged if a child returns with his or her parents to the family’s home country (Government of Sweden, Proposition 1996/97: 249).” (56)

“In fact, the child’s perspective should imbue all the agency’s activities, so that children’s own asylum claims are always investigated and reported in the decisions. It is further stated that specific skills to deal with children are required at the units where applications from children are assessed (Migration Board, 2007).” (57)

“Despite the high priority given to children’s rights in asylum policy documents and Sweden’s good reputation, Swedish refugee policy has in recent years often been criticized both nationally and internationally.” (60) → kritserades av FN kommitté för barns rättigheter år 2009 för att barnets bästa inte togs i beaktning i tillräckligt hög grad i asylprocessen 

“Practically all of the handling officers in the study were convinced that most asylum-seekers do not have ‘real’ asylum claims.” (61)

“All the interviewees talked about the time constraints as central in their everyday work.” (63)

“At a micro level, it is not a question of reluctance, but rather migration officers’ fear of making children feel hurt or afraid in situations where difficult questions need to be asked. They believe that children might be re-traumatized if they are asked questions about difficulties in their past. Somewhat contradictory is the fact that at the same time most of the officers are convinced that children applying for asylum in Sweden do not have ‘real’ asylum claims.” (66)

Metoden för studien

• Document review (legislation, legal commentaries, propositions,  handbooks and internal guidelines used at the Migration Board) to see how the best interest of the child was defined (51)
• “102 asylum decisions of all those asylum-seeking children accompanied by one or both parents who in 2007 received a decision by Migration Board units in Sweden’s three biggest cities, following what is known as ‘oral examination’” (51)
• semi-structured group interviews with 35 handling officers at the MIgration Board (51ff)

Ev policy-rekommendationer

“A solution to this problem, presented in the article, would be to more clearly assess children’s asylum claims in light of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).” (abstract)

Summarised by: Josefin Åström