24 July 2019

The European Asylum Support Office (EASO) published a video on age assessment to support practitioners in the development of reliable and rights-compliant age assessments. The video will soon be available in 22 EU languages.

Age Assessment

European Member States apply a variety of methods for age assessment in the context of separated children, including medical and other examinations. Next to this lack of a standardized approach, none of the age assessment methods currently available and used is able to establish the exact age of an individual. A margin of error, with years between the anticipated minimum and maximum age, will therefore always be present. Consequently, there are risks that due to the imprecision of age assessment techniques, individuals have their age wrongly assessed. In particular, separated children may be wrongly assessed as adults and denied the special protection and assistance that States are obliged to grant them under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international and regional human rights provisions.

See also:

– The EASO practical Guide on age assessment

– The position paper on age assessment of the Separated Children in Europe Programme (SCEP)