Last October, Evelien Brouwer, a senior researcher at ACMRL, and Romain Lanneau, a former student of the IMRL Master's programme, presented the results of their research on age assessment technologies in asylum procedures.
Evelien and Romain explained that, in EU asylum law, the identification of a person as a child plays an important role with regard to the enhanced procedural and reception safeguards for minors, but also with regard to the assessment of the responsible state under the Dublin Regulation, and the right to family reunification. Currently, Member States use different technologies of age assessment which raises questions on the reliability of these techniques and the protection of the rights of the child. On the basis of recent case laws from France and the UK, Evelien and Romain argued that these different technologies lead to highly diverging legal assessments as well, despite the fact that EU laws aim to provide common standards on these assessments.
We thank Evelien and Romain for their intriguing and critical contribution to this critical issue in European asylum law.