Children’s rights and child-friendly justice in the appellate asylum procedure at the Council for Alien Law Litigation: an ethnographic and cocreative study

The relationship between children’s rights and asylum law is fraught with challenges and tensions. My PhD explores how these play out and can be addressed in the Council for Alien Law Litigation (RvV-CCE), Belgium’s appeal court for asylum and migration. When unaccompanied minors or families with children receive a negative first-instance decision, they may appeal to the RvV-CCE. This appeal is mainly written, but each year several hundred children and young people attend oral hearings in Brussels. These encounters reveal key challenges at the crossroads of children’s rights and asylum law, especially around balancing vulnerability and agency. My research asks: (1) how judgments at the RvV-CCE come into being; (2) how children’s procedural rights are mobilised and practiced; (3) how key actors perceive these rights; and (4) how these rights should and could be implemented in appellate asylum proceedings.