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Chapter 10 | The Determination Process
to child specific persecution. Therefore objective
indicators of risk often have to be obtained by
commissioning reports from academic experts,
non-governmental organizations, or journalists
working in the country from which the unaccompanied
or separated child has fled. These practitioners
also allege that they are often obliged to adduce evidence
of the child’s level of maturity and consequent
ability to understand the risk of persecution, because
decision makers frequently assume that children’s
emotional and intellectual capabilities are similar
to those of adults.
Reason for Refusal letters sent to unaccompanied
or separated children usually quote extensively
from the Immigration and Nationality Directorate’s
own CIPU reports even if expert opinion has been
submitted on behalf of the unaccompanied or separated
child. Recent research published by the Home
Office’s Research and Statistics Unit 35 confirms that
case workers in the Immigration and Nationality
Directorate in general rely heavily on CIPU reports
when reaching an initial decision on asylum applications.
By contrast, their view of expert country
reports submitted by representatives is overwhelmingly
negative unless they trust the particular legal
representative who has submitted the report. Government
case workers report they are often unable
to verify the “trustworthiness” of expert country
reports or evaluate the authenticity of documents
submitted (even when submitted by CIPU) and
therefore do not rely on them. By failing to take into
account the views of most experts the case workers
are not only acting in breach of the Immigration
Rules, they are also depriving unaccompanied or
separated children of essential evidence which they
do not have the maturity or knowledge to articulate.
There is some evidence that the Country Information
and Policy Unit has begun responding to
criticism about its failure to include information of
relevance to claims by unaccompanied or separated
children in its Country Reports. As part of the current
research, we studied the content (though not
the accuracy) of a sample 36 of October 2004 CIPU
reports 37 on common countries for unaccompanied
children. We found that these reports do include
information on some child specific forms of persecution
including child trafficking for prostitution
and domestic slavery, the forcible recruitment of
child soldiers, female circumcision, and abduction
and enslavement, though they do not include reference
to forced marriage. The sections on child specific
forms of persecution tend to be brief and limited to
a few short paragraphs. Though this new content
contrasts favourably with reports produced in earlier
years, which contained even less of this information,
they still lack sufficient detail to provide an evidential
basis for child asylum claims.
The lack of specificity in the CIPU reports seems
to be a result of the research method used, which
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