A/HRC/15/29 I. Introduction 1. The present report is submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 12/6, in which the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) was requested to prepare a study on challenges and best practices in the implementation of the international framework for the protection of the rights of the child in the context of migration, in consultation with relevant stakeholders. 2. Written submissions were received from States, intergovernmental organizations, national human rights institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and individual experts.1 On 25 May 2010, OHCHR organized a one-day open-ended consultation on the issue of protecting the rights of the child in the context of migration. The results of that consultation, which included input from expert participants, States and other stakeholders, have informed the preparation of this report.2 3. The outcome document of the special session of the General Assembly on children, A world fit for children, pledged to build “a world in which all girls and boys can enjoy childhood … where their safety and well-being are paramount and where they can develop in health, peace and dignity”. Yet, to many migrant children, these laudable goals will sound hollow. Often the object of suspicion, neglect and abuse, children are locked up in immigration detention centres, denied access to essential services because of their or their parents’ status and subjected to the same regimes of criminalization as adult migrants. 4. Children in the context of migration, including children left behind and children on the move,3 appear in the universal protected group of “children” at the same time as they are divided into a number of different legal categories. Article 1 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child defines a child as “every human being below the age of eighteen years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier”. Children are also placed in a range of different categories of persons on the move, including refugees4, stateless persons,5 migrant workers or family members of such workers,6 trafficked persons or smuggled persons7 and separated or unaccompanied children.8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 The text of most submissions received can be found on the migration page of the OHCHR website. Available from http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/migration/consultation/index.htm. A report of this consultation, as well as the interventions of participants and other useful links can be found on the migration page of the OHCHR website (see footnote 1). The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants has noted that “children on the move are migrant children taking an active part in the migration process” (A/HRC/11/7). “A person who … owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country” (art. 1A, Convention relating to the Status of Refugees). “A person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law” (art. 1, para. 1, Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons). “A person who is to be engaged, is engaged or has been engaged in a remunerated activity in a State of which he or she is not a national” (art. 2, para. 1, International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families). Trafficking is defined as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation” (art. 3(a), Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational 3