ABSTRACT
Large numbers of child migrants today—here referred to as “Arendt’s children”—are functionally stateless, whether or not they have a legal nationality. The fundamental rights to protection, family life, education, and health care that these children have, in theory, under international law are unenforceable in practice. Moreover, their access to state entities willing and able to protect them is tenuous at best. This article surveys the obstacles to rights enforcement across a range of jurisdictions and contexts. It argues that, given their disenfranchised and precarious situation, these children have a stronger claim than has so far been acknowledged to effective advocacy and enforcement of their human rights within the states where they live.
[I]t turned out that the moment human beings lacked their own government and had to fall back upon their minimum rights, no authority was left to protect them and no institution was willing to guarantee them . . . [What was] supposedly inalienable, proved to be unenforceable. 1
