 Fundamental rights generally, and the rights of the child are of course protected in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. Protection of the child is a function of the EU generally and of the Commission under the Lisbon Treaty. And of course that's all done against the backdrop of the fundamental international legal instrument and all of this UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Today Margaret is going to concentrate on the migration area and as everybody knows vulnerability of children and protection of children in the migration field and the huge problems that have been with migration in recent years has been a very central issue. It has affected a lot of attention but as we all know the attention span of media and public opinion can be short and this remains a very problematic area and one in which it's very important that the focus is kept on it and that the effort to deal with it is maintained. So Margaret will speak to us about that so we look forward to what you have to say Margaret. Thank you to the Institute of International and European Affairs for focusing on this topic. I'm really glad to be here, it's a privilege. Today I'd like to tell you a bit about the current situation given overview of some of the figures at European level and what's happening. Look at the European Union actions and European Commission role, what's in the pipeline, what we're focusing on right now and a quick look at some of the challenges ahead over the next year or so. So when we talk about the protection of children in migration we mean all children not only unaccompanied but including those travelling with their families because they have also been exposed to a lot of risks and violence and trauma and for example when we gave, we diverted our money on violence against children to support IOM Save the Children and UNICEF in boosting child protection and they have confirmed that the extra focus on children with their families is needed as well. So we broadened it, you're all aware I'm sure of the 2010 communication on the action plan on unaccompanied minors which was very good at putting the needed focus on this very vulnerable group of children and we keep that focus on unaccompanied children while expanding it a bit to cover all. I will speak mainly about what happens on EU territory because my work concerns the member states of the EU and also because all member states have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child all member states have a protection responsibility for any child on their territory irrespective of their status and then of course we have a body of EU law on asylum migration. So we know there are a lot of problems before children ever arrive in Europe and when they're returned but I'll focus really on the area where we all should have the biggest fear of influence. So first of all perhaps some figures because it's good to keep in mind child asylum applicants in the EU in 2016 there were 281,520 child asylum applicants both with their families and unaccompanied and that compared to only 45,000 in 2010 and for unaccompanied children where there were only 10,610 in 2010 we have a growth to almost 100,000 in 2015. Out of these almost 100,000 in 2015 where did they apply for asylum? Sweden 33,000, Germany 22,000, Hungary and Austria in the 8,000s Ireland and Malta 40 children, Estonia 0 children just to show the range so we go from the 30,000s to 0. There's a lot of talk about the increase in the number of children. Basically the ratio between unaccompanied children and children in general is pretty stable in 2010, 1 in 4 children who arrived were unaccompanied and that's still the case even if the numbers increased. In terms of some of the big EU programs and the policy focus over the last two years you're all aware of the EU relocation program which was set up for 18 months with two purposes. One to relieve the pressure on Greece and Italy and two to facilitate access to asylum procedures, international protection procedures and I suppose with that in mind they said we'll only include nationalities where the overall asylum recognition rate is 75% or more and that list of countries has changed a bit over time but it has a rather negative effect especially when we think about Greece of excluding Afghans which is one of the biggest groups and for example Pakistanis. So this program was set up it included a focus on vulnerable groups including unaccompanied children. It was very very slow to get off the ground and the numbers inched up sometimes by one a week but as at the end of August from Greece out of 586 unaccompanied children who are eligible for relocation 420 had already been relocated and 526 were accepted. Ireland has accepted 68 children and as at the end of August 22 had already been transferred to Ireland. Finland has been the champion in the relocation of unaccompanied and separated children. They have accepted 141 and transferred 132. There were also some difficulties in Greece because of the definitions around unaccompanied and separated children and there were issues with unaccompanied or separated children who were married or unaccompanied children who themselves had children. So there were a lot of very complex cases. In any event the progress has been going faster in the last few months. About one third of all the unaccompanied children are below the age of 15 and some are below the age of 9. There have been cases of very young unaccompanied children arriving. With regard to Italy there are all sorts of difficulties and the relocation of unaccompanied children hasn't really worked. It only started in May 2017 and only 31 have been relocated to date. Most of them to Belgium and a couple to Belgium and Norway and one to Germany. The relocation scheme is coming to an end. In the last report that the commission issued at the beginning of September they urged all member states to make whatever pledge is possible before the 26th of September. So any cases that will be in the pipeline or have been initiated can be followed through. So there's still an opportunity to relocate some more people. There are still 2,800 people who are eligible for relocation from Greece. A little look at Greece as at the 15th of August the Greek Center for Social Solidarity had 2,400 unaccompanied children on their books are registered and 1,500 of them are on a waiting list for a shelter place. So a shelter specifically for unaccompanied children. And unfortunately 142 of those are detained in police cells. We've been following these figures over the last year and a half and in November last year the number of children detained in police cells had got down as low as 2 and it's sad to see it go up again. Overall there were 8,000, just over 8,000 referrals for shelter placement in Greece from the beginning of January. With regard to the EU resettlement scheme, 2,518 people have been resettled under these schemes. Ireland has fulfilled its pledges under the July 2015 conclusions but member states are invited to submit ambitious new pledges by today the 15th for 2018. While children and families are often resettled, the proportion of unaccompanied children is really low. Definitely below 3% of all the resettlement cases. So if we think of 22,500 people resettled in Europe, we should also bear in mind that in the UNHCR forecast of resettlement needs for 2018 they have said 1.2 million people need to be resettled. So one of the main challenges I think and it's something we need to address in all our work is the concepts around deserving versus undeserving children or the hierarchy of sympathies. We do not consider these children as children. They are minors, they are migrants, they are whatever label. But if one of our own children or one of our national children or a child we know was in any of these situations that we often see for children migration, we would be horrified. So I think if we can really focus on ensuring that we consider the needs and rights of all children, we have all subscribed to the fact that all children have rights, we can achieve a lot more. And we see that across the board. Why is it okay to leave a child sleeping in a ditch or on cardboard? Why is it okay to see children being starved and detained in Libya? Why when an unaccompanied child goes missing from a reception centre, we see situations where there might not even be a headcount, nobody pays any attention, nobody reports that child missing to the police, there is no alert issued in the Schengen information system and so on and so forth. Even when cases come tonight, there's a notion of, well that's what unaccompanied children do, they go missing and that's simply not good enough. A child is a child is a child. In regard to the protection of children, the primary responsibility lies with member states and that of course implies costs as well, often quite a lot of costs. So the EU plays only a supporting role and we have to recognise the work that member states do and all the good things member states do. Let's look a bit at how the EU does support the protection of children migration. First of all, EU silent migration law. There were very good provisions in place already over the last seven, eight years which offered safeguards and protection including in reception, dedicated reception spaces for children and so on. Implementation lags behind sometimes and in 2016 the Commission proposed modifications to the common European asylum system laws on qualifications and reception and asylum procedures and some of them are child specific and very valuable including in the area of reception with more focus on training of staff and child safeguarding and one of the biggest, the most, if you'd like, ambitious changes was in the area of guardianship. There were already provisions in guardianship but they stipulated requirements for example to appoint a guardian as soon as possible which doesn't say very much. So in the proposals we tried to pin that down a bit more and there have been cases for example where a guardian was responsible for a thousand children. So several cases I mean well known. So clearly knowing how complex it is to protect children migration who might be on the move, who don't speak your language. While the guardian isn't a panacea they can really help to safeguard the child's rights to improve child-friendly information, to protect the child's right to be heard, to ensure the child has access to legal representation. So I am sure that the efforts we're making to improve guardianship are on the right track and I hope that when Member States continue to negotiate those laws they won't roll back too much. For example saying 10 days is too short even for a temporary guardian for the appointment. When we know that if children are going to go missing or in the hands of smugglers and traffickers it's going to be within 24 to 48 hours. If there's no guardian in place by that time they cannot help. So apart from the legal proposals we committed in the April communication set up a network on guardianship to help guardianship authorities work together to exchange expertise and often because their work involves cross-border aspects, Dublin regulation transfers, family reunification so on. So that will be set up by January 2018. We've already met Member States once this year on that next meeting on the 6th of October. We've also funded under the Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme some projects to promote guardianship for unaccompanied children and also foster care. We see that even if EU law provided for foster care for unaccompanied children, which is the case happily in Ireland, it was underutilised and we've been trying to promote it as a more successful way to protect children and it's also much more cost effective. If you have a big reception centre or a big detention centre, more importantly you need Phyllis, don't you? The communication that was adopted in April this year covered some of the main areas, identification and protection. So one thing that doesn't happen is that when children arrive, a common set of data is recorded across all states, so name, nationality or statelessness, date of birth, whether they're unaccompanied or not and it makes it more difficult if they move or if they go missing. We also put a lot of focus in the communication on what happens when children go missing. You're all aware of the estimated at least 10,000 missing children by Europol. It's likely to be much higher with reports of at least 20 children going missing a day in Italy and in Sweden in one week 1,000 children have gone missing in one region. In reception, apart from the EU law modifications, we put a focus on alternatives to detention because often children are detained and it shouldn't be the case. Under international law and the standard set by the UN committee on the rights of the child and UNHCR policy, immigration detention of children is never in their best interest. So in order to avoid detention, we need to ensure that viable and accessible alternatives are in place. We also encourage member states to monitor reception. It's not only about having a centre up and running, somebody needs to monitor how it's run. Another chapter of the communication concerns swift and effective access to status determination and improving procedural safeguards. When we talk about status determination, we don't only mean international protection, but also I think we're all aware that there are undocumented children living in every state, some of them for many years, and it would be useful if member states could consider ensuring that there is status resolution procedures and especially for children who might have been in a country for a certain period of time, as it's in nobody's interest to have an invisible group of children. Durable solutions for every child. They could include integration, a move to another third country, or sometimes only if it is in the child's best interest, return to the country of origin or another third country. But it does require a robust and thorough best interest determination procedure. So we're looking at how to promote standards and improve training and guidance on areas such as that. We committed also to collate good practice on the protection of children and migration across all areas. There are a lot of wonderful things being done, but unfortunately the information isn't shared, whether it's by authorities, national, regional or local, including cities or NGOs, we need to gather all this information. Access to education crops up again and again, and healthcare. Irrespective of a child's status, they should have access to formal inclusive education. The EU funds can also be used to promote non-segregated education because there's a risk that where there have been large numbers of children arriving, they will be segregated. There's funding. There are various funds, many, many funds that are used in the context of asylum migration, most notably the asylum migration integration fund, which is run for the most part nationally under national programs. And then there are other funds, structural funds and so on. And we have asked member states to prioritize children in funding. Often they're not visible, even in the summer when I was looking at top programs for member states for the AMAF fund. Some member states reflected children throughout. In some you would not know there were any human beings under the age of 18. So we're really trying to ensure that when we're talking about asylum migration, we have an increase in the number of children. So it needs to be visible. Also, as you may be aware, there is more of a push on returns, on effective return policies in line with the EU return directive. If children are to be returned, we want to make sure that the best interest assessment has been done properly and that reintegration is a real focus because it's not clear that it is yet. So funding also in the context of return, if detention is to be used more, we want to ensure that alternatives to detention exist. Ireland I think does not detain any child in the immigration context. Other member states do. But a lot is being done and has been done. There's a lot of good things at European level and among member states and many, many countries and international organizations. The Ombudsman, for example, the ENOC, the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children, has been focusing on children migration consistently and continuously over the last couple of years as well. And even for children who are accepted in countries, it's quite a huge integration task in terms of access to education and so on. So we should not lose focus and there has to be continued attention and not only in a negative way.