04-10-2013
In the frames of visiting meeting of Committee of Supreme Council of Ukraine on problems of human rights, national minorities and international relations, representative of Commissioner of Supreme Council of Ukraine on observance of children rights, Oksana Filipishyna visited TAC for refugee in Mukachevo.
Here, she acquainted with the living conditions of children asylum-seekers. In a result of communication with children it is established that they do not have appropriate access to educational services, they are not provided with the translators, work on their socialization and integration into society is not implemented.
Oksana Filipishyna has reported about these and other problems issues at the meeting of Parliament Committee focusing attention of the present on the fact that the number of minor asylum-seekers with accompaniment of adult who whish to get refugee status or status of a person in need of subsidiary or temporary protection increases within each year in Ukraine, however status granting and integration into Ukrainian society is realized in a very slow way.
“The number of children receiving the corresponding status is too low. In majority cases, the children receive reject in granting the corresponding status: in 2010 – 69,4% (out of the number of applications on which corresponding decision was made), in 2011 – 55,6% , in 2012 – 58,1%.
In addition, the procedure on status granting to children is extremely enduring: in the end of 2010 – 23 children out of 59 applied ones were in the procedure of status granting, in 2011 – 13 out of 22, in 2012 – 30 of 73. However, in accordance with the legislation on consideration of application about recognition as a refugee or person in need of subsidiary or temporary protection must be carried out within the time limit of not more than three months since the day of made decision on document processing.
It is inadmissible when consideration of applications on granting the corresponding status is delayed because State Migration Service sends back materials of the case to territorial subdivision for rework. Only after intervention of Commissioner of Supreme Council of Ukraine on human rights of State Migration Service of Ukraine a decision was made on granting the status of a person in need of subsidiary protection to two children from Afghanistan, whose applications had been considering more than 7 months. At the moment there are no instructions as to authorities of legal representative appointed to a child for representing her interests in the bodies of governmental power, establishments and organizations.
In practice, the authorities of legal representative for a child is limited by writing application on behalf of the child about his intention to get refugee status or status of a person in need of subsidiary protection. This kind of uncertainty can lead to child’s threat to find himself in dangerous conditions for his life and health.
Municipal bodies off executive power do not carry out control for living conditions of this category of children and their accompaniment. In most cases, children live in the families of friends, with whom they made friendship, live in conditions unsuitable for residence, work at the markets, miss Ukrainian language courses, etc. such children are accompanied just by organizations like UNHCR, connection with them is often lost.
So far, procedure of age determination of children separated from the families arriving to the territory of Ukraine has not yet been approved, which make difficulties in placing the children.
As a rule, these are children in the age of 16-17 years old without documents, when detecting them they present about themselves invalid data making identification impossible. In consequence, order of forensic examination is applied in a crime procedure to determine the age of a child that arrived to the territory of Ukraine without adult’s accompaniment.
There is a problem of arrangement of children separated from the families, who came to Ukraine without accompaniment of adults. Placements of children to orphans and shelters for children do not solve the problems of integration of children-asylum-seekers into Ukrainian society. In the present context it is necessary to take immediate measures on speeding up the opening of Acceptance and Stay Centre for children arriving to the territory of Ukraine without adult’s accompaniment and children-refugees on the grounds of TAC in Yagotyn, Kiev oblast, which has been in the process of construction in the course of 7 years providing with living conditions for their residence and socialization”, – Representative of Commissioner marked.