3. Deprivation of Liberty of Children Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) combines aspects of the right to life, the right to personal integrity and dignity and the right to personal liberty in one provision. Article 37(a) prohibits torture and other forms of ill-treatment, capital punishment and life imprisonment without possibility of release. Article 37(b) prohibits unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of personal liberty of children. Article 37(c) defines minimum conditions of detention in line with the right to humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person, and Article 37(d) provides every child deprived of liberty with the right to legal assistance in order to challenge the legality of the deprivation of liberty. In the ICCPR, these rights are covered in different provisions, namely Articles 6, 7, 9 and 10. While Article 9 ICCPR only prohibits unlawful and arbitrary arrest and detention, Article 37(b) CRC goes an important step further: ‘The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.’ Although there are certain indications in the drafting history of this provision that the terms ‘arrest, detention or imprisonment’ were meant to be ‘applicable only in the context of juvenile justice’,13 the ordinary meaning of this provision, the context in Article 37 and the object and purpose of the treaty in the sense of Article 31(1) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties leave no doubt that these terms are used in line with their meaning in international human rights law, as outlined above.14 Only the term ‘imprisonment’ is restricted to the administration of criminal justice and refers exclusively to detention after conviction by a criminal court.15 However, ‘arrest’ means any act of apprehension of a child by any public authority for any purpose, and ‘detention’ is used in the broad sense outlined above, namely covering all forms of deprivation of liberty.16 Finally, the term ‘child’ means every human being below the age of eighteen years, as defined in Article 1 CRC. 13 See, e.g., Eva Manco, ‘Detention of the Child in the Light of International Law – A Commentary on Article 37 of the United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child’, 7 Amsterdam Law Forum, ALF, 2015, pp. 55, 58 ff& 62 (note p. 68 with further references). For the drafting history of this provision see, e.g., Sharon Detrick (ed.), The United Nations Convention on the Right of the Child: A Guide to the ‘TravauxPréparatoires’, Dordrecht, MartinusNijhoff Publishers, 1992, p. 477; Geraldine Van Bueren, The International Law on the Rights of the Child, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995, pp. 209 & 214. 14 Cf. in this respect e.g. Liefaard (2018) op. cit., p. 329: ‘More than a quarter of a century later, the protection of children deprived of liberty has clearly moved beyond the context of juvenile justice’. 15 Cf. UN Body of Principles (1988), op. cit., for the definition according to which ‘imprisoned person’ means ‘any person deprived of personal liberty as result of conviction for an offence’. 16 See: William Schabas & Helmut Sax, ‘Artice 37 – Prohibition of Torture, Prohibition of Death Penalty and Life Imprisonment and the Deprivation of Liberty’, André Alen, Johan van de Lanotte, Eugen Verhellen, Fiona Ang, Eva Berghmans & MiekeVerheyde (eds.), A Commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Leiden/Boston, MartinusNijhoff Publishers, 2006, pp. 35, 59 ff& 84 ff with reference to the practice of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. See also Liefaard (2018), op. cit., 8 ff. 67