The United Nations Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Erika Feller (left), gave a speech in Fairfax, Virginia today that contained this remarkable and sad statistic: There are more than 1.6 million children around the world who have become separated from their parents or guardians and, worse, even the most developed countries have few systems in place to deal with a situation in which a child refugee or migrant shows up within a national border and the child's parents are somewhere else.
Fellers said current asylum and migration procedures are designed primarily for the needs of adults and she said that a common problem in many countries, including the US, is the lack of government-appointed counsel or guardians for these children.
“The absence of representation to enable a child to navigate the legal hurdles of entry and proper assessment of protection needs is fundamentally detrimental to children’s best interests,” she said.
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