The Society for Threatened Peoples STP (Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker GfbV) has challenged with indignation the announcement of the Federal Ministry of the Interior that the full recognition of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child by Germany will "in practice change nothing”. "We take it that refugee children are now finally protected from the merciless deportation policies of the German authorities”, said the chairperson of the German section of the STP, Tilman Zülch, on Wednesday. "If the Federal Ministry of the Interior brings in restrictions again, we shall immediately set to work to make sure that the rights of these children who were born here or who have grown up here are fought for to the bitter end in the German courts.” "According to a report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (one of the most renowned German newspapers) on 4th May a spokesperson for the Federal Ministry of the Interior also said that the resolution on the unconditional recognition of the Convention on the Rights of the Child "is merely an aid to construing the document”.

"Any attempt to take their homeland away from the refugee children and to chase them out of our country must from now on be stopped”, said Zülch. The policy of the STP is to make sure that refugees who have had for many years temporary residence permits and who often belong to persecuted ethnic and religious minorities are able to remain in Germany. Their children, who have grown up here, for whose integration teachers, social workers, representatives of the churches and communities, refugee councils, human rights activists and many other citizens have worked, speak German not only as their mother-tongue, but they have for the most part hardly any sense of contact with the country of origin of their parents.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child states that the welfare of the child has priority. Whenever decisions are taken which can affect the child it is the welfare of the child which must be given first place – this applies both in the family and for state action.

Tilman Zülch will be glad to provide further information at politik@gfbv.de