A REFUGEES’ rights group has urged Putrajaya to implement an alternative-to-detention (ATD) pilot programme for children being held at immigration detention centres without further delay.

Asylum Access Malaysia (AAM) said the hold-up to the programme is mind boggling, especially when Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin – then as home minister – had given assurance in July 2019 that ATD plans were underway.

The ATD advocates for children to be placed in community-based alternative-care arrangements instead of detention centres (IDCs).

“Many countries responded during Covid-19 to release detainees, especially children, but we seem to have instead moved towards detaining more children,” AAM executive director Tham Hui Ying told The Malaysian Insight.

The Home Ministry revealed in Parliament last month that 756 children, including refugees and stateless children, are currently held in IDCs and more than half are without parents or guardians.

“What is more alarming is that we have just heard in Parliament that there have been as many as 1,355 Covid-19 cases in IDCs between August and December 8, 2020. This does not include the IDC clusters prior to August, which saw about another 700 cases.

“Director-general of health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah has identified detention centres as high-risk areas and yet these children’s lives are being endangered by being detained in overcrowded facilities where physical distancing is impossible,” Tham said.

Civil society groups Suka Society, Yayasan Chow Kit and the International Detention Coalition pushed for ATD in 2013.

The following year, government agencies, Suhakam, and civil society groups discussed the ATD pilot programme.

The pilot programme would oversee the release of five detained children on a rolling basis into community placement programmes funded and managed by the civil society groups involved.

Tham said despite all the progress and the completed preparation they have not been able to secure the release of at least five children to begin with the programme.

The lawyer also said it can never be in the best interests of a child to be detained.

She shared a true story of a young refugee who experienced detention in Malaysia.

“He was detained for nine days but to him, it felt like nine years and the trauma of detention continues to impact him many years later.

“There is a very well-established body of clinical research that shows that subjecting children to immigration detention, even for short periods of time, can have a profound impact on their physical and psychosocial wellbeing.

“These include developmental delays in young children, malnutrition, self-harm and suicidal thoughts.”

Compared with Asean neighbours, Tham said as of early 2019, there have been no asylum-seeking children in Indonesia’s immigration detention centres.

Thailand, too, has signed an intergovernmental memorandum of understanding and has released hundreds of children and their mothers into the community, she said.

“In continuing to detain children in IDCs, we are not only acting in violation of international obligations but are also falling behind our Asean neighbours, such as Thailand and Indonesia.” – December 11, 2020.