The Best Interests of the Child Principle as an Independent Source of International Protection

Abstract: The Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the best interests principle codified in Article 3 in particular, is playing an increasingly significant role in decisions involving the admission or removal of a child from a host State. The talk will discuss the extent to which the best interests principle may provide an independent source of international protection. That protection may, for instance, proscribe the removal of a child from a host State notwithstanding that the child is ineligible for protection as a refugee or protection under the more traditional non-refoulement obligations in international human rights law.

About the speaker: Jason Pobjoy is a barrister at Blackstone Chambers and a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, where his research explores the relationship between international refugee law and international law on the rights of the child. He is the founding Chair of the Cambridge Pro Bono Project. Jason is also an Australian qualified lawyer and practiced for several years as a litigation solicitor. Jason completed a Masters in Law at the University of Melbourne and a Bachelor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford, and he has also been a Research Associate at the Refugee Law Project at Makerere University in Kampala and a Hauser Visiting Doctoral Researcher at New York University School of Law.