14 4.1.1 Refugee Law Initiative Working Paper 76 Parent and Child as Co-Litigants: Blurred Lines Experts interviewed underscored the dangers inherent in co-litigant children and parents. “Often children are just treated in line with their parents, as part of their parents’ procedures”, when they should be addressed separately.69 Experts believe that child litigants should distance themselves from parents and demand separate legal representation.70 Reasons for this might be the parents have a fundamental disagreement as to what the best interests of their child are,71 or the parents believe certain legal actions run counter to family and cultural values.72 A problem specific to statelessness is that small children are unable to make decisions for themselves regarding nationality, and parents may be against their child obtaining certain citizenships which impedes their journey.73 This expert commentary reflects the above findings of Nolan & Skelton, Fenton-Glynn, CRIN, and their concern that a failure to separate the child from parents will lead to violations of a child’s rights.74 Some litigators thus do take care to identify and accept cases in which there is a situation specific to children that cannot be subsumed by the parents’ case.75 In some cases, however, that power is not held by the litigator. “The biggest problem is when judges say ‘unfortunately the child cannot come and therefore I’m using the parents’. Some find it too unpleasant and a waste of time to work with children.”76 As discussed in Section 4.3, part of the risk assessment that accompanies each case is gauging the level of sympathy held by the court and judge.77 Despite these risks posed by multiple litigants noted in the Literature Review and in expert interviews, this particular sample of cases initially appeared to tell a different story. Considering the possibility of potential conflicts of interest between parent and child, and/or being faced with an adjudicator who fails to separate the claims as required, these findings were unexpected. Not only did half of the positive cases include multiple litigants, but the majority of those cases presented a parent/child combination (Figure 2). Within those cases, some courts even acknowledged the importance of separating a child’s claims from parents.78 Upon peeling back the layers, however, some commonalities among these positive cases emerged. 69 Human Rights Scholar B (Video Conference, 3 September 2024). 70 Executive Director A, Human Rights NGO (Video Conference, 16 November 2023); Human Rights Barrister (Band 1) (Video Conference, 3 April 2024). 71 Executive A (n 70). 72 Executive Director B, Child Rights NGO (2024) Video Conference, 11 January 2024). 73 Former Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (Video Conference, 27 November 2023). 74 Text to n 22, n 27, n 28, n 31. 75 Executive A (n 70). 76 CRC Chair (n 73). 77 Scholar A (n 67). 78 Case No. LVwG-2018/14/1219-1 (2019) Austria Tirol Administrative Court; Case No. 898/2009 (2024) Montenegro, Administrative Court.