Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Mandatory detention of refugee children: A public health issue?

2011; Oxford University Press; Volume: 16; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/pch/16.8.e65

1918-1485

Rachel Kronick, Cécile Rousseau, Janet Cleveland,

Child and Adolescent Health

The arrest, detention, imprisonment of a child shall be...used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.-United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child Last night I couldn't sleep.I was worrying about [what the] judge [would say].I said to [my daughters] "when we're free for us it will be like New Year's".-Asylum-seeking mother held in detention in Canada with her daughters (three and 11 years of age)I n August 2010, the MV Sun Sea, a ship carrying 492 Tamil asylum seekers arrived off British Columbia's shores.Among the people on board were 49 children including six unaccompanied minors.They had spent nearly three months on the ship, and when they arrived, all 49 of these children and their 25 mothers were detained at the Burnaby Youth Secure Custody Centre (Burnaby, British Columbia) (1; Vasan L, personal communication).These families were detained for lengthy periods, some lasting up to seven months (Vasan L, personal communication).The Harper government's response to the arrival was unequivocal: some of the asylum seekers were "human smugglers and terrorists" (2).The ship and the people it carried created "significant security concerns", Harper warned (3).This perceived threat fuelled the creation of Bill C-49 (which was staunchly rejected by all opposition parties in the previous government), and its reincarnation, Bill C-4, entitled 'Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act'.The children who were detained after arrival on the MV Sun Sea are not the only asylum-seeking children subject to detention.The practice of detaining asylum-seeking children is common in Canada.In 2008, an average of 77 children were held in detention each month (4).Children are usually held in immigration holding centres, which resemble medium-security prisons, surrounded by high barbed-wire fences and staffed by guards.Detention is usually based on one of two grounds: either an immigration officer is unsatisfied with a person's proof of identity, or the officer believes the family is at risk of absconding (ie, a 'flight risk') (4).Fewer than 1% of asylum seekers who are detained are suspected of possible criminality (5).While Canada has ratified the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child, which insists that "the best interests of the child" always be a primary consideration, and that a child should be detained only as a "last resort", these principles are a far cry from real life practice (4).Decision makers often do not consider the best interests of the child, and detention is routinely used, not as a last resort, but rather without exploration of alternative measures.