DEFENCE FOR CHILDREN INTERNATIONAL (DCI) - Belgium | Practical Guide
A second important context in which children can be deprived of their liberty
concerns the context of the child protection or child welfare system. In this context
children can be deprived of their liberty for reasons of protection or education,
or because children have disabilities or suffer from physical or mental problems.
These children can be held in:
ʺʺ Educational institutions and rehabilitation centres;
ʺʺ Child detention schools;
ʺʺ Psychiatric institution;
ʺʺ Establishments for disabled children;
ʺʺ Facilities where children are placed or hospitalised (voluntarily or not) for their own
protection;
ʺʺ Youth care institutions;
ʺʺ Drug rehabilitation units;
ʺʺ Isolation cells/rooms (even in open institutions) where children can be held for their
own protection or for security or disciplinary purposes.
Another context in which children can be deprived of their liberty is the context
of migration. Unaccompanied or separated children, asylum-seeking children,
migrant children can be deprived of their liberty alone or together with members of
their family because they enter another country or have to leave a specific country.
These children on the move can be held in:
ʺʺ Reception or deportation centres;
ʺʺ Retention centres;
ʺʺ Return flights;
ʺʺ Any form of administrative detention.
Administrative detention is also used as a general term to cover forms of deprivation
of liberty ordered by the administration for a variety of reasons, one of which is
detention for public security reasons. Other forms include military detention or
detention for committing administrative offences.
This non-exhaustive list of contexts and forms of deprivation of liberty covers a wide
range of places in which children find themselves deprived of their fundamental
right to liberty. However, the different establishments and contexts should be
isolated from one another and may well be strongly interrelated. For example,
children in the context of criminal justice may end up in child protection facilities
and the other way around.
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