KOPIN and the International Detention Coalition (IDC), together with the Global Campaign to End Immigration Detention of Children, call on States to take steps to prevent or end child detention and start employing humane community-based alternatives.

KOPIN is a voluntary, non-profit organisation based in Malta working in the field of north-south cooperation and global education.

It said in a statement issued on the occasion of Human Rights Day, being celebrated on Monday, that detention, even for short periods of time, has a negative psychological and emotional impact on migrant children, who typically do not pose a threat to the receiving community.

States should make a pledge to end the immigration detention of children, using the examples set by countries such as Belgium, who have alternatives to detention in place for migrant children.

Moreover, countries like Japan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have recently taken steps to release children or prevent their detention altogether.

The Global Campaign to End Immigration Detention of Children was launched this year at the 19th Session of the Human Rights Council and started conducting a series of “focus months”, concentrating on the issue of child immigration detention in countries like Australia, Greece, South Africa, and Mexico, where 4,172 children were detained in 2011, a number reported to exceed 5,000 in 2012.