A/HRC/20/24
(f)
Applying the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners
to migrants under administrative detention, including providing for the separation of
administrative detainees from criminal detainees; ensuring an adequate standard of
accommodation, including minimum floor space, lighting, heating and ventilation;
providing for adequate sanitary, bathing and shower installations; allowing
administrative detainees to wear their own clothing, and provide facilities for their
cleaning; a separate bed with clean bedding for each detainee; adequate food and
drinking water; at least one hour of outdoor exercise daily; the right to communicate
with relatives and friends and to have access to newspapers, books and religious
advisers; ensuring the presence of at least one qualified medical officer who should
have some knowledge of psychiatry, as well as a qualified dental officer; and ensuring
the right to make a request or complaint to the central prison administration, judicial
authorities or other proper authorities;
(g)
Giving particular attention to the situation of women in detention,
ensuring that they are separated from men, and attended and supervised only by
women officers, in order to protect them against sexual violence, and avoid the
detention of pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers;
(h)
Ensuring that legislation does not allow for the detention of
unaccompanied children and that detention of children is permitted only as a measure
of last resort and only when it has been determined to be in the best interest of the
child, for the shortest appropriate period of time and in conditions that ensure the
realization of the rights enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Children under administrative detention should be separated from adults, unless they
can be housed with relatives in separate settings. Children should be provided with
adequate food, bedding and medical assistance and granted access to education and to
open air recreational activities. When migrant children are detained, the United
Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty and the United
Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice should
be strictly adhered to. The detention of children whose parents are detained should
not be justified on the basis of maintaining the family unit: instead, alternatives to
detention should be applied to the entire family;
(i)
Ensuring that legislation prevents trafficked persons from being
prosecuted, detained or punished for illegal entry or residence in the country or for
the activities they are involved in as a consequence of their situation as trafficked
persons. In this respect, the Special Rapporteur invites States that have not yet done
so to consider ratifying the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in
Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations
Convention against Transnational Organized Crime;
(j)
Taking into due consideration the particular vulnerabilities of specific
groups of migrants including victims of torture, unaccompanied older migrants,
migrants with a mental or physical disability and migrants living with HIV/AIDS.
Detention of migrants belonging to vulnerable categories and in need of special
assistance should be only allowed as a measure of last resort, and they should be
provided with adequate medical and psychological assistance;
(k)
Applying stateless status determination procedures to stateless migrants,
and provide persons recognized as being stateless with a lawful immigration status.
73.
The Special Rapporteur would like to remind Governments that alternatives to
detention should not become alternatives to unconditional release, whenever such
release is a possibility. Governments should put in place safeguards to ensure that
those eligible for release without conditions are not diverted into alternative measures.
19