OPU has just this week achieved a landmark victory before the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
The Committee officially ruled that the Czech Republic violated the rights of children by placing an 11-year-old Afghan girl and her family into immigration detention for over a month. This, according to CRC, is contrary to the best interests of the child under the article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This is not surprising – the Committee has repeatedly stated in its recommendations for over 10 years that the immigration detention of children is always a violation of the Convention. In 2021, it even explicitly urged the Czech Republic to completely abandon this practice. Now, following this groundbreaking ruling, the Committee has given the Czech Republic one year to report back on the corrective measures it has adopted. We hope to leverage this international precedent to push for a complete end to child detention – by pointing out our international human rights obligations, which have to be followed even within the EU Pact framework.
Find the complete Czech press release: here