Sara Lembrechts

Keywords: Asylum, child-friendly justice, children’s rights, courtroom ethnography, procedural justice

Working Group(s): Working Group on Courts and Refugee Protection

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Bio

Sara Lembrechts is a PhD researcher at the Migration Law Research Group at Ghent University. She studies children’s rights in appellate asylum proceedings in Belgium, using a multidisciplinary approach of legal ethnography. Her research is supervised by Prof. Dr. Ellen Desmet and embedded in the interfaculty Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees (CESSMIR) and the Human Rights Centre (HRC).

Sara has a Master’s in Children’s Rights and Childhood Studies (Berlin, 2013), an LLM in International Laws (Maastricht, 2011) and a Bachelor in European Studies (Maastricht, 2009). Before starting her PhD, she worked as a researcher and policy advisor for the Children’s Rights Knowledge Centre (KeKi, 2012-2020). In addition, she was involved in several research projects about children’s rights and child abduction (University of Antwerp, 2016-2020).

During her studies, Sara interned with the UNICEF Liaison Office at the United Nations in Geneva (2011), with the Belgian National Commission on the Rights of the Child (2010) and with Amnesty International in New Zealand (2008).

Her publications and research interests cover children’s rights, human rights, child participation in legal proceedings, child abduction and knowledge management. She co-authored the Children’s Rights Legal Commentary on the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Protocols (Edward Elgar, 2019) and was co-editor for the Routledge International Handbook of Children’s Rights Studies (2015).

PhD title

Children’s rights in appellate asylum procedures in Belgium: a legal ethnography of the Council for Alien Law Litigation

Affiliation

Ghent University

Migration Law Research Group (MigrLaw)
Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees (CESSMIR)
Human Rights Centre (HRC)

Recent publications

Title	Type
Lembrechts, S. (2023). Towards Child-Friendly Asylum Justice. In L. Flower & S. Klosterkamp (Eds.), Courtroom Ethnography: Exploring Contemporary Approaches, Fieldwork and Challenges, Palgrave Macmillan (in press).	Book chapter (peer-reviewed)
Merckx, E. & Lembrechts, S. (2023). Kindvriendelijke Richtlijnen voor de Magistraat die Kinderen Hoort. Brussels: LeA Uitgevers (in press). [Child-friendly guidelines for judges hearing children in court]	Monograph
Lembrechts, S. (2022). Hoe onderzoekt het VN-Kinderrechtencomité de klachten van kinderen en jongeren in migratie? Tijdschrift Asiel & Migrantenrecht (A&MR), Stichting Migratierecht, pp. 194-205. [How does the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child review individual complaints of children and young people in migration?]	A4 journal article
Kruger, T., Carpaneto, L., Maoli, F., Lembrechts, S., Van Hof, T., & Sciaccaluga, G. (2022). Current-day international child abduction : does Brussels IIb live up to the challenges? Journal of Private International Law, 18(2), 159–185.	A2 journal article (peer-reviewed)
Van Vooren, E., & Lembrechts, S. (2021). Involving children and young people in policymaking : a children’s rights-based approach to co-creative practice in REFLECTOR. In L. Van Praag (Ed.), Co-creation in migration studies : the use of co-creative methods to study migrant integration across European societies, Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp. 247–278.	Book chapter (peer-reviewed)
Lembrechts, S., & Desmet, E. (2021). Communication 56/2018 : V.A. v. Switzerland : rights of accompanied children in asylum proceedings: the challenges of a holistic approach and high quality decision-making. Leiden: Leiden Children’s Rights Observatory..	Blogpost, co-author
Van Hof, T., Bruijnen, L., & Lembrechts, S. (2021). Custody and international child abduction proceedings in Belgium : how, when, about what and by whom should the child be informed? On the right of the child to receive adequate information. In L. Carpaneto & F. Maoli (Eds.), Children’s right to information in EU civil actions : improving children’s right to information in cross-border civil cases, Pisa: Pacini Giuridica, pp. 53–89.	Book chapter (peer-reviewed)
Van Hof, T., Lembrechts, S., Maoli, F., Sciaccaluga, G., Kruger, T., Vandenhole, W., & Carpaneto, L. (2020). To hear or not to hear : reasoning of judges regarding the hearing of the child in international child abduction proceedings. Family Law Quarterly, 53(4), 327–351.	A2 journal article (peer-reviewed)
Vandenhole, W., Erdem Türkelli, G., & Lembrechts, S. (2019). Children’s rights: a commentary on the convention on the rights of the child and its protocols. Edward Elgar.	Monograph (peer-reviewed)
Lembrechts, S., Putters, M., & Van Hoorde, K. (2018). Kinderen en rechters in gesprek in familiezaken van internationale kinderontvoering in België en Nederland. Tijdschrift voor Jeugd en Kinderrechten, (3), 274–290. [Conversations between children and judges in family cases of international child abduction in Belgium and the Netherlands.]	A2 journal article (peer-reviewed)