According to the Swissinfo news website, the refugees undergo the X-ray analysis of their bones in order to establish their age on the basis of growth characteristics. Meanwhile, doctors and lawyers say that such methods do not guarantee the exact results, while exposing children to radiation, and thus leading to violation of the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children, the media outlet said.
"This method is designed primarily to determine biological age [how old someone seems] not chronological age [how old they actually are]," a specialist at Lausanne University Hospital said, as quoted by the media outlet.
Another controversial method of establishing the age is the so-called sex survey, which includes the analysis of sexual characteristics of the children refugees, that has reportedly been carried out in the federal center for refugees in Zurich over the past two years. According to an asylum lawyer at Amnesty International, quoted by the media outlet, "it is forbidden to perform such intimate examinations at collection centres, just a few days after the arrival of these traumatised young people".
Europe has been beset by a massive refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants fleeing their crisis-torn countries in the Middle East and North Africa to escape violence and poverty. The majority of them cross the Mediterranean Sea and arrive in the European Union using southern EU nations as transit points.
