So far, policymakers are reluctant to acknowledge that the conduct in question constitutes "persecution" as interpreters of the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees have generally construed it. This parallels the difficulties female asylum seekers had in establishing that rape, sexual violence, or domestic abuse were capable of amounting to “persecution” which could ground a refugee claim. These claims have now been established and can form the basis of a comparative argument that can benefit child asylum-seekers. The grant of asylum under the Refugee Convention to unaccompanied child applicants should not continue to represent the exception rather than the rule. Nor should child migrants continue to encounter the paradoxical yet pervasive situation, where their particular and distinctive suffering and needs are discredited and disbelieved (because they are seen as being “like adults”), and yet their reliability and veracity are impugned (because they are children and therefore unreliable).

Clearly the serious protection deficit annually facing tens of thousands of unaccompanied and separated child asylum-seekers urgently requires rectification. It has led to troubling and predictable human rights violations against children, including prolonged detention, unjustified refusal of refugee protection, worrisome return or refoulement of asylum seeking children back to persecuting states, and failures to protect children being trafficked into destination states for exploitation. Many unaccompanied and separated child migrants have a stronger claim to asylum than is generally recognized or acknowledged, because their child-specific persecution can be adjudicated within the already established and accepted framework of international refugee law as enacted in domestic law. Moreover, their urgent need for skilled legal representation and specialized guardianship are protections already envisaged in international law instruments such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child cited above. The UNHCR, the UN agency charged with overseeing implementation of the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees (as amended) has been calling for these measures for years.

Some states, such as the UK, France, and Canada, already guarantee free legal representation to unaccompanied and separated children and reject detention of asylum seeking children as unacceptable. But other states, such as the United States and Australia, lag behind, so far failing to institute free legal representation and abolish the use of detention for unaccompanied and separated children. Most states have yet to accept and vigorously develop the concept of child-specific persecution as it applies, for example, to the experiences of child asylum seekers fleeing forced armed recruitment, gang violence, female circumcision, or forced marriage. Instead of ignoring children's claims, policymakers, administrators, and immigration judges need to switch from the adult-focused lens through which they miss the opportunity to listen to (and even to elicit) the factual basis for children’s asylum claims to a more child-specific approach.

None of the suggested reforms above involve open door immigration policies or reckless incentives to use children as migration anchors or investment commodities. Nor do they necessarily promote the long-term care of asylum seeking children within the destination state. In many cases, a more child-focused asylum system, such as that advocated here, would allow for the speedier assessment of cases in which return is a viable and rights-respecting option. In all cases, the views of the children in question need to be elicited with care. Trafficked children and children destined to bonded domestic service or other forms of forced labor should be entitled to effective state intervention instead of the current vacuum of illegality or irregularity into which most unaccompanied and separated children slip. Where children clearly lack protection at home, however, they should be granted asylum or analogous and permanent protection in the destination state. In this way, the lofty aspirations of the Refugee Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as the noble sentiments that form the basis of much democratic policy making, will come some steps closer to realization.