Court of Justice to rule on eviction of children from asylum shelters (Feature in Free Movement, by

Natasha Jackson, former RLS-Athens volunteer lawyer, wrote on FreeMovement about Jay's case;

States have domestic and international legal obligations to provide suitable housing for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. But a vulnerable young client at the Refugee Legal Support(RLS) clinic in Athens was last month kicked out of his accommodation for breaking the shelter’s rules. Jay*, a 17-year-old boy from Afghanistan, was condemned to homelessness for the trivial teenage rebellion of breaking his curfew.

This case has coincided with the recent publication of Advocate General Campos Sánchez-Bordona’s Opinion in Case C-233/18 Zubair Haqbin v Federaal agnstschap voor de opvang van asielzoekers, a reference arising out of the exclusion of an unaccompanied asylum-seeking minor from his reception centre in Belgium.

It also comes in the wake of the European Committee of Social Rights’s decision of 23 May 2019 in International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and European Council for Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) v Greece (Complaint No. 173/2018) to issue “immediate measures” against Greece, after considering detailed evidence and submissions about the reception conditions for children in the country. The decision directs Greece to adopt all possible measures to protect the rights of migrant minors on its territory, including to ensure immediate access to age-appropriate shelters.

see more here