Ditch Age Assessments: Children Seeking Asylum and Refuge in the UK

The Home Office’s latest age assessment measures, announced in September 2023, will allow the use of scientific age assessment methods to estimate the age of children arriving in the UK. This would subject them to medical procedures that leading paediatricians consider to be unnecessary, harmful and potentially traumatic – not to mention that they often produce inaccurate results. These new scientific methods focus on assessments of children’s dental and skeletal development to determine their possible age. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and other leading medical and professional bodies have raised ethical concerns about using scientific methods for examinations that are not medically necessary and only serve immigration control and enforcement purposes. They would expose children to unnecessary stress, harmful medical examinations, and the risks associated with radiation exposure. Worryingly, the new legal provisions would also automatically consider a person to be over 18 years old if they don’t consent to the use of scientific methods. Of course, the potential consequences of refusal, such as deportation, may make a child more likely to agree to a medical procedure unwillingly. Such consent, given under duress, is widely considered to be unethical and invalid. Legislators have a duty to uphold the highest child protection standards, regardless of how a child came to our shores. An integral part of protecting children seeking refuge and asylum must be to acknowledge that the scientific methods proposed by the Government are harmful, unnecessary and unethical