Countries: Poland, Ukraine, World Sources: Médecins Sans Frontières, Save the Children Please refer to the attached file. Polish legislators must drop harmful ‘age as a verdict’ measures for children and migrants In Poland, harmful medical age assessment methods are being used by authorities on unaccompanied minors arriving at the Polish border from Belarus. A new report highlights how dental and radiological tests are unreliable and unethical, risking children being wrongly treated as adults and denied protection. MSF urges Polish lawmakers to exclude harmful age-testing of migrant children from a new anti-trafficking law. Warsaw – As legislators in Poland draft a new law aimed at combatting human trafficking, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) urges that any measures inscribed in the legislation must not harm children. Children who are migrants are currently exposed to unreliable and inappropriate medical screening methods to determine their age. MSF calls on law makers to reject these methods as part of the law, and to ensure that ethical, comprehensive, and holistic means of assessing a child’s age are included. A new MSF report, Age as a verdict, written with partners Save the Children and We Are Monitoring, looks at how age‑assessment procedures currently used in Poland are at risk of being formalised in the new law as part of the victim‑identification process. However, these procedures – including dental and radiological methods – are not scientifically reliable and are unethical for use in this context, in addition to carrying significant risks for children. Using these procedures to determine a minor’s legal age leads to harmful consequences; they can be unlawfully denied entry into Poland, and therefore protection and safety. “In the past, we were notified about young people who, shortly after undergoing an age‑assessment test, had been pushed back to Belarus directly from hospitals, still wearing casts and bandages,” says Dr Alice Silvestro, MSF medical coor