We believe using facial AI age recognition is unreliable and ethically unsustainable. Government must stop this approach and develop a multidimensional tool assessing biological, cognitive, developmental and emotional age of traumatised unaccompanied asylum seeking children.

The Government plans to legislate very soon to use facial AI to determine the age of unaccompanied asylum seeking children. There is strong evidence that such a method of physical age assessment can be highly inaccurate, and technically as well, as it does not necessarily capture relevant aspects such as child development, their level of understanding, and emotional maturity. Thus we believe age assessment methods that solely focus on physical features are unethical, and risk vulnerable children being treated as adults.