Minor or adult? A different approach in the Nordic countries vs Europe
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.71388/apollonia.179753Abstrakti
Around 1 out of 5, or 150 million children, under the age of 5 worldwide are unregistered or lack a birth certificate. Unaccompanied minor migrants have many benefits that are inaccessible to adults. It is evident that the age of migrants is one of the key variables that must be ascertained. Equally, it is important that juveniles are housed under safe conditions, including not with adults who are professing to be children.
In contrast to teeth, bone growth is dependent on nutrition and external factors. Teeth and bone develop independently and, consequently, it might be a good argument for using both dental and bone development in medical age estimation.
The Nordic countries use dental development to estimate the age especially by staging wisdom teeth from radiographs. All countries also estimate age based on skeletal maturity. In addition, Finland and Denmark use physical maturity criteria and Denmark uses sexual maturity. Various recognised scientific methods are used by the different countries.
All EU + countries, except Ireland, approve some form of medical age assessment. 21 use dental radiograph analysis and 16 dental observations. 23 countries use carpal (hand/wrist) radiographs, 14 collarbone radiographs and 2 knee MRIs and 8 sexual maturity observations.
