Reliability of age assessment methods in the context of security and border management

Call UE del programma Horizon Europe (HORIZON), bando "Civil Security for Society 2026" (HORIZON-CL3-2026-01). Tipo di azione: HORIZON Coordination and Support Actions. Stato: aperta. Prossima scadenza: 05/11/2026 (single-stage). Testo ufficiale (in inglese): Scope: Many unaccompanied children and young persons arriving at the external EU borders and seeking asylum, lack official documents showing their identity and age. Age assessment methods are important as they contribute to the determination of, for example, where an individual will be initially housed and what services, supports, and legal processes they will receive to ensure protection and, if applicable, child protection. In other cases, minors are victim of trafficking of human beings (THB) criminal activities, either across the EU external borders, or within the EU borders. In other cases again, age assessment methods are necessary for law enforcement investigations on protecting children, forensic investigation, and/or the identification of victims. No age assessment method can offer a 100% reliability. Different approaches have different sensitivity and specificity, and different sample sizes and representativeness, and some approaches are based on a non-European knowledge base. Furthermore, there is considerable variation in methods of age assessment. Methods may use approaches as diverse as interviews, psychological assessments and other holistic approaches; medical approaches such as X-rays, CT scans, DNA…