A/HRC/36/21 There was only one toilet and one bathroom for fifty people. Detainees were allowed 30 minutes a day outside in the yard, and no contact with anyone on the outside. 29. He had eventually been released and had come to Athens, where he had shared a room with ten other Afghans, and had got a job as a tailor working 12 hours a day for a year. However, he had other aspirations, and had made contact with an association, which had helped him to learn the Greek language and to register in school. After seven years, his asylum application had been examined and he had been recognized as a refugee. He had recently acquired Greek citizenship. For the past six years, he had been an interpreter for the Greek Council for Refugees, helping to provide legal and social support to other unaccompanied child refugees and asylum seekers. 30. Mr. Hassanpour emphasized the great dangers that migrant children were facing across the world. Smugglers, traffickers, border guards, police, or even fellow travellers could take advantage of them. He made three concrete recommendations to the Member States: (a) Child protection officers should be present at every step of the migration journey to ensure that children’s best interests are safeguarded. Child protection officers — not police or border guards — should be making decisions on what is best for unaccompanied children; (b) Children should have access to fundamental services such as interpretation, psychological support, education and health care. Where relevant, unaccompanied children should also have effective access to asylum procedures. There should be firewalls between children’s access to these services and the migration enforcement functions of police and border guards; and (c) Children should be provided with adequate shelter and proper reception services, and immigration detention of minors should be suspended. Immigrationrelated detention was never in the best interests of the child. B. Interactive discussion 31. Interventions were made during the plenary discussion by representatives of the European Union, Slovenia (also on behalf of Austria and Croatia), El Salvador (on behalf of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), Argentina, Sierra Leone, Mexico, France, Brazil, El Salvador, South Africa, the Council of Europe, Ecuador, the Holy See, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, the Russian Federation, Greece, Honduras, Colombia, Iraq, Turkey, Portugal, Fiji, Bulgaria, Pakistan (on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation), Libya, the United States of America, Jordan, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and China. A small number of other participants requested the floor during the panel discussion but were unable to deliver their statements owing to a lack of a time. These included representatives of the following States: Luxembourg, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, the Philippines and Switzerland.4 32. The International Committee of the Red Cross made an intervention, as did the following non-governmental organizations and national human rights institutions: the International Detention Coalition, in a joint statement with Terre des Hommes Fédération Internationale and Save the Children International; Save the Children International; the American Civil Liberties Union; the Equality and Human Rights Commission (of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), in a joint statement with the Scottish Human Rights Commission and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission; Caritas Internationalis (the International Confederation of Catholic Charities), in a joint statement with the Associazione Comunità Papa Giovanni XXIII and with Dominicans for Justice and Peace – Order of Preachers; Defence for Children International, in a joint statement with the International Catholic Child Bureau; and the Istituto Internazionale Maria Ausiliatrice delle Salesiane di Don Bosco, in a joint statement with the International Volunteer Organization for Women, Education and Development. 33. The following sections represent a brief and non-exhaustive summary of the interventions made from the floor during the discussion. 4 The written interventions are on file with the Secretariat and are available for consultation. 7