The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has asked Spain to ensure that a Senegalese minor be moved from adult detention, where he has spent the past 81 days.

The teenager, referred to as B.C., was accused of piloting a migrant boat to the Canary Islands and faces charges of facilitating irregular immigration. Since December 21, 2023, he has been held in prison in Gran Canaria together with adult detainees.

B.C. has a birth certificate issued in Senegal, which shows that he is 17 years old. But Spain, relying on medical tests carried out in mid-February, decided he was between 16.51 and 19.9 years, and "probably 18.2 years" old.

Another teenager from Senegal, known as A.G., who said he was 15 years old, was declared on the basis of the age test to be a minor and transferred to a juvenile detention center.

The UN says that when the age of a possible minor is uncertain, the person must be given the benefit of the doubt and should be treated as a child. The notice issued by the Committee this week, seen by the news agency EFE, states that Spanish authorities failed to accord B.C. his rights under the international Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Also read: Spain: Criticism of age assessment tests for young migrants

Minor status denied

This is the second time this year that the UN has pulled Spain up for denying the minor status of young people reaching the Canary Islands in boats from the African coast, according to EFE.

Another case last month involved a 14-year-old boy who had traveled to the islands in August 2023 and who was living on the streets in Madrid. The boy, from Gambia, was denied access to state support for minors, despite having produced a photo of his passport and his birth certificate showing his age.

Also read: 'A child needs more than food and shelter': The fate of unaccompanied minors on the Canary Islands

The Committee on the Rights of the Child has previously stepped in to protect minors held in immigration detention centers (CIEs), but B.C.'s situation is different: he has been held not in a CIE but in an adult prison where, under Spanish law, minors cannot be detained.

B.C.'s fate now lies in the hands of a court in Las Palmas, which will decide whether the age that appears on his birth certificate should be recognized, rather than that determined by the medical examiners.

His lawyers say that this United Nations resolution ought to sway the court in favor of ordering the youth’s immediate release and transfer into the care of those responsible for the protection of minors in Las Palmas.

With EFE

Also read: Canary Island seek help to relocate almost 5,000 migrant minors