Children escaping conflict zones are often seen as fortunate survivors. However, the profound challenges they face upon resettlement in a new host country are frequently overlooked. A critical issue is the recognition of their personal status, particularly giving legal effect to their relationships with parents, guardians, or spouses. How should states grant legal recognition to foreign institutions like kafalah, or manage complex relationships such as surrogacy or underage marriages that they would otherwise prohibit while protecting the identity of its legal order? How do states, in light of these different and changing forms of family, view and balance the continuity of personal status of children against their other rights and interests? This paper aims to explore solutions that prioritize children's rights while ensuring the continuity of personal status across borders. It assesses how existing mechanisms within international family law, migration law and human rights law interact to protect the rights of children fleeing conflict zones and ensure the continuity of their personal status. A key aspect of the analysis involves examining case law from selected European countries to understand how these jurisdictions handle the legal recognition of personal status established abroad. By comparing case outcomes and legal frameworks, the paper identifies where gaps exist in the protection of children’s rights. The paper concludes by proposing recommendations and best practices to better secure the continuity of personal status for children in cross-border contexts, particularly those displaced by conflict.

Starting from the assumption that cross-border placement of children may be a measure of protection to children living in territories where wars are taking place, the paper aims at considering whether the legal framework of reference is “fit” for purpose.
Cross-border placement of children is regulated by the 1996 Hague Convention and the Brussels II ter Regulation: both instruments were conceived as instrument concerning parental responsibility matters, focusing more on the private side of family relations.
Their “public side” is becoming more relevant, not only due to migration flows, but due to the ongoing wars around the world.
The Brussels II ter Regulation has introduced relevant novelties on the intra-EU cross-border placement of children. As far as the 1996 Hague Convention’s regime is concerned, during the last Special Session problems in the application of art. 33 have been pointed out and a Working group will be appointed to deal with them.
In light of the above, the paper will consider the relevant legal framework of reference with a view to grant protection to children living in war conditions, but also to protect their fundamental right to identity and to family life.

Australia is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world, offering a haven for refugee children and those orphaned internationally. However, past child welfare and legal practices in Australia have had a profoundly negative impact on generations of our First Nations’ children, British Migrant children, children in care and children forcibly removed and coercively adopted.
As a country, all our national apologies have related to the past ill-treatment of children, which were legally and politically condoned.
This presentation discusses how contemporary Australian responses to children orphaned by war, internecine conflict and by circumstance have been shaped by those past practices and, what we still need to do to protect the rights of orphans at law. Some orphaned children in Australia are cared for under the auspices of the state Refugee Minor Programs, with remarkably positive outcomes. Others enter Australia with no guardians, oversight, or access to services they need. Critically, many orphaned children enter Australia without any judicial review, administrative oversight, or delegation of their guardianship. This presentation examines the legal tensions inherent in child guardianship in Australia and whether orphaned children are disadvantaged by lack of legal guardianship. It discusses whether Australia is in fact satisfying the mandates for the care of orphaned children stipulated under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and why access to legal protections and resilience-based case management approaches with orphaned children are critical to ensuring they are cared for as their parents would have wished.