Our children or their children? The obligation to protect unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

Sammanfattning: The right to seek asylum, as protected in inter alia the Refugee Convention, does not provide a right to obtain asylum, however, it obliges the states to protect asylum-seekers against being returned to the frontiers of a territory where his or her life or freedom will be threatened. The current prohibition is known as the principle of non-refoulement and constitutes, according to the Swedish Aliens Act, a legal impediment to enforcement in the case of refusal of entry or of expulsion. The Aliens Act also recognises that there may be other situations where a refusal of entry or expulsion may lead to an unreasonable result and hence, pursuant to Chapter 12 Section 18 indents 2- 3, an application of practical impediments can be lodged. Such practical impediment could - in the context of unaccompanied or separated children - inter alia consist of the lack of an adequate reception in the country of origin. In the newly adopted provision in Chapter 12 Section 3(a) of the Aliens Act, it is established that the responsibility to ensure such adequate reception lies with the executive authorities. The aim of this thesis is to examine the scope of protection and the application of the regulation on practical impediments to enforcement, in order to determine which considerations are taken into account in relation to the obligations that inter alia the CRC imposes.