Practical guide on how to protect family unity and reunification more effectively in human mobility and mixed movement contexts during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recently published a practical guide on how to protect family unity and reunification more effectively in human mobility and mixed movement contexts during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The guide recommends a series of measures aimed at States, which focus on protecting family unity, preventing separation, and ensuring reunification in the context of human mobility, including for unaccompanied or separated children and adolescents, who require international protection or who leave their homes in search of better opportunities or family reunification. A central element of the publication is safeguarding the best interests of children and adolescents, and several of the issues raised are clearly linked to ensuring these children’s right to identity, without which the preservation of family origins, their search and potential reunification are at high risk.