Joint Report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child

A Joint Report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) on the situation of children and adolescents in the Dominican Republic highlights the rights to nationality, equality, non-discrimination, and access to education and health. It was prepared by an ad hoc coalition of civil society organizations, including OBMICA, in mid-August 2023.

The report is based on the organizations' experience and efforts to secure respect for the full rights of children and adolescents in the Dominican Republic and covers the following topics:

• The rights of stateless children or those at risk of statelessness: the violation and non-implementation of Law 169-14 and its consequences for children, as well as shortcomings in universal access to birth registration that contribute to the risk of statelessness;
• The rights of migrant children and children affected by migration: the impacts on children of increasingly restrictive migration policies, such as expulsions and persecution of migrants in the Dominican Republic;
• The rights of the most vulnerable children to education, social protection, and a family environment: as a result of various policies implemented, education, health, and social protection for children in vulnerable situations have suffered setbacks.
• Anti-immigrant hatred and the criminalization of migrants and their descendants: the direct impacts these phenomena have on the health of migrant children and descendants of migrants.

Based on the content of this submission, the ad hoc coalition of civil society organizations set out a series of recommendations.

The CRC response on September 25, 2023

In light of all submissions received (state and non-state), the CRC issued relevant recommendations to the State in September, including the following on migration, childhood, and youth. It therefore urged the State to:

• End the arbitrary detention, deportation, and expulsion of Haitian migrant children, with particular attention to unaccompanied children, ensuring that public authorities fully comply with the best interests of the child as a primary consideration in all decisions to prevent family separation, promote family reunification, and guarantee that children have effective access to refugee status determination procedures and international protection;
• Improve screening capacities at entry points and borders, ensuring that children's claims are duly considered in the refugee status determination process and that the process is child-friendly and sensitive to their age;
• Improve bilateral coordination and step up cooperation efforts to design, adopt, and implement a binational protocol for the protection of children in the border area with Haiti;
• Prevent and suspend migration-control actions that violate the human rights of Haitians and people of Haitian descent, including children;
• Ensure access to basic services, including education, housing, health, and justice, as well as the provision of free legal aid, particularly for unaccompanied or separated children;
• Accelerate the adoption of laws against migrant smuggling and trafficking in persons, and fully strengthen and implement programs such as the National Action Plan against Trafficking in Persons and the Smuggling of Migrants, 2022-2024.

Note: English-to-Spanish translation by OBMICA, as these CRC recommendations are not currently available in Spanish.

It should be noted that these recommendations are in line with the intentions expressed by the States of the region on migration and childhood in June 2023 (see the next page), which in fact refers to the importance of mainstreaming the Convention on the Rights of the Child in their work and highlights children as a new migration actor of growing importance in the Americas.