CCPR/C/115/D/2258/2013 also for providing the necessary background material, including information on the situation in the asylum seeker’s country of origin or first country of asylum. 2 4.4 The State party provided a detailed description of the provisions of the Aliens Act that regulated asylum proceedings in cases involving unaccompanied minors. It maintained that unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors must meet the same conditions as other asylum seekers in order to be granted asylum. However, children were considered a particularly vulnerable group, and special guidelines therefore applied to the examination of their applications. All unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors would have an appropriate adult appointed by the State Administration to represent them and safeguard their interests until they turned 18. The examination of the child by the Refugee Appeals Board was adapted to the child’s age and maturity. Normally, the Board was less demanding when it came to the burden of proof. The State party referred to paragraphs 213 to 219 of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status and held that, when a minor had not reached a sufficient degree of maturity to make it possible to establish a well-founded fear of persecution in the same way for him or her as for an adult, it might be necessary to give greater regard to certain objective factors. 4.5 In the proceedings concerning the request for residence permits for unaccompanied minors under section 9c (3) (i) or (ii) of the Aliens Act, children under the age of 12 were normally not considered sufficiently mature to undergo ordinary asylum proceedings. As for children between the ages of 12 and 15, a child was assessed individually to determine whether he or she was sufficiently mature to undergo asylum proceedings. Children over the age of 15 were normally considered sufficiently mature, but a specific determination was made in each individual case. In the assessment of the minor’s maturity, factors taken into consideration included not only the minor’s age, but also other special factors, such as impaired development, illness or severe trauma. The Danish Immigration Service made the decision regarding the child’s maturity, and the assessment was subject to review by the Refugee Appeals Board in connection with the consideration of a refusal of asylum, if relevant. 4.6 Pursuant to section 9c (3) (ii) of the Aliens Act, a residence permit could be issued to an unaccompanied alien who had submitted an application for a residence permit pursuant to section 7 (asylum) prior to his eighteenth birthday if there was reason to assume, in cases other than those mentioned in section 7 (1) and (2) of the Aliens Act, that the alien would in fact be placed in an emergency situation upon return to his or her country of origin. Under section 9c (3) (ii) of the Aliens Act, the assessment by the authorities took into account both the personal circumstances of the asylum seeker and the general situation in his or her country of origin. For instance, a residence permit was normally granted in cases in which the child’s parents were dead or there was reliable information that the parents could not be found; or in which there would be a serious risk that the child would in fact be placed in an emergency situation upon return. Pursuant to section 40 (1), first sentence, of the Aliens Act, an asylum seeker must provide such information as was required for deciding whether a residence permit could be issued under the Act. Accordingly, it followed that an unaccompanied minor who claimed that he had no family network in his country of origin normally bore the burden of proving such a claim. 4.7 As to the authors’ case, the State party maintained that the Refugee Appeals Board had based its decision of 22 September 2010 on the principles contained in the judgement of the European Court of Human Rights in NA. v. the United Kingdom (application No. 25904/07, judgement of 17 July 2008) – inter alia, that regardless of the deterioration of the security situation in Sri Lanka and the resulting increase in the number of human rights 2 6 As to the background material regarding Sri Lanka, the State party referred to the website of the Refugee Appeals Board (www.fln.dk).