The detention of foreigners unaccompanied children in Europe. Considerations around Rahimi vs. Greece (ECHR, 2011)

Abstract

The European Union and the Council of Europe have reminded its Member States that it is necessary to improve the protection of unaccopanied foreing minors. In particular, we are going to study in this paper the rights of detainees. Concerning this matter, we consider of a remarkable interest the rule of the European Court of Human Rights in Rahimi v. Greece (2011): it has been the first time that the Court has considered as a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) when an unaccompanied minor is neglected by national authorities after being released without any kind of protection from a detention center. At the same time, the documents that in this paper we have studied —approved from 2010 to 2012— explicitly recognize that in Europe have not yet been adopted the measures required to protect effectively the rights recognized in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), and that it necessary to promote the adoption of procedures to safeguard the administrative and judicial protection of these children.