What is in the “best interests of the child”? – Dagsavisen
Ukraine is asking 23 European countries to accept Ukrainian children living in orphanages, except Norway. The Ukrainian ambassador has not recommended that Norway become a recipient country for orphans. The reason is that the Norwegian authorities can not guarantee that the children will be sent back to Ukraine after the war is over.
They refer to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the best interests of the child. “There may be children who are very, very young when they arrive. Some of them are from infants up to three years old. Then it is difficult to give a guarantee now that we will return them, after they may have grown up in Norway ».
The Convention on the Rights of the Child is forgotten as an argumentative right in the name of children when warring parties have ruthlessly harmed the child population. It has been absent in Syria, Darfur, Armenia. In Yemen, Afghanistan in Georgia, Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. And now in the Great War after Russia’s attack on February 24, more than a month ago. No decision-making bodies have flagged the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
We must therefore conclude that little or no value is attached to it.
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Then it becomes paradoxical that the relatively unmanageable concept of “children’s best” is flagged with great zeal in a preliminary discussion between the Norwegian and Ukrainian authorities about the latter’s return claim applicable to children in orphanages who may be temporarily moved to Norway. The point of contention, as we have understood it, and which makes the case stand still at the moment, is a demand from the Ukrainian authorities that they all return to Ukraine after they have been in Norway, for the time being indefinitely. In this way, when the time comes, they can return as Ukrainian citizens of the future in their entirety – to their home country – hopefully with “transitional benefits” from rich Norwegian authorities.
In our view, the Norwegian decision is sensational. In recent years, the Norwegian Child Welfare Service and Norway have received strong criticism from Russia and many Eastern European countries, including Ukraine, for illegally taking children out of families and keeping them in Norway, of course completely unjustified to compensate for low birth rates in Norway.
At the same time, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled Norway for failing to facilitate the return of children from foster care to their parents. Norway now invokes the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the best interests of the child in order to deny the children return to their home country.
The term “best interests of the child” is not, to our knowledge, precisely defined in any public documents.
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The way is then open for imaginative interpretations, as we believe both the ECHR and the Norwegian Supreme Court (HR) have done. For those of us who have fought for children’s rights for a lifetime, the importance of children’s best interests is somewhat clearer.
There is no distinction between “the best interests of the child” and “the best interests of the child”. It is a misconception to think that it is in the best interests of the child to live in a place that is better than another place. Of course, it is not the case to move the child to the neighbor if the neighbor is better off than where the child lives.
There is no refusal to return Ukrainian children after the war because it is better to live in Norway than in a war-torn Ukraine. The best interests of the child refer to the fact that consideration for the child must trump other considerations, such as consideration for the parents or political considerations.
Thus, Norway violated the Convention on the Rights of the Child when in 2016 it refused to accede to the Additional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on children’s right to appeal against decisions made by the public sector on the grounds of Foreign Minister Børge Brende: that there is considerable uncertainty about the consequences the scheme may have for Norway’s political room for maneuver and a possible legalization of political issues “and he elaborates on this in that the appeal scheme is unsuitable for international review in individual cases and elaborates that the UN Committee on Children to a lesser extent than Norwegian courts balances the consideration of the child’s best interests against «other important societal considerations such as, among other things, immigration-regulating considerations».
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On the other hand, the understanding of «the child’s best interests – this special child’s best interests – can lead to the child staying in Norway after the end of the war due to this child’s special circumstances. It may be that the child has a special connection, chronic diseases, injuries of one kind or another that can trigger Norwegian reservations about return to Ukraine. But this will deal with individuals who may need extra measures for a limited period of time while others are allowed to go home. It is therefore in the «best interests of the child» to be the only one with the Ukrainian authorities for extra support from Norway or with extra Ukrainian staff to detain the child.
Norway should therefore guarantee that unaccompanied minors from Ukraine can be sent back to their home country after the war and individually assess whether it is best for a child to stay in Norway for a shorter or longer period, as in all other cases the child welfare service is in the picture.
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