Refugee and Asylum Seekers
Determining the Age of Aslyum Seekers
Under international law, children are treated differently from adults. They have comprehensive rights that recognise their developmental needs. But to access these rights, they must be identified as a child, which is why age determination matters.
In response to alarming reports about the age determination procedures adopted by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, we wrote a report into the age determination of asylum seekers in Australia.
The information we gathered revealed serious gaps in the way age determinations were taking place, with repeated reports of determinations being made by inadequately qualified officials without reliance on substantive evidence.
The benefit of doubt: Improving the procedures for determining the age of asylum seeker children
‘Age determination’ is the process by which a person’s age is assessed. The decision about whether or not an asylum seeker is a child or an adult has important implications on the way in which they are treated through the refugee determination process. The most pertinent of those implications, for the time being, is whether the asylum seeker is detained on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea or in the more ‘family friendly’ facilities on Nauru.