This study examines how the new temporary law (SFS 2016:752) guarantees the child’s right to mental health; focusing on the asylum-seeking unaccompanied minor. This subject is examined since the Swedish law that regulates migration got reduced to the minimum standards that can be found in the EU and in international conventions when Sweden received 163 000 asylum seekers during 2015. 35 400 of them were unaccompanied minors. This leads to the question if the new regulations jeopardize the child’s right to mental health. To answer that, this study’s theoretical ground that will be used is legal positivism. By practicing a legal-judicial method and law-based sociological method the study follows three questions; 1. What is Sweden bound to guarantee according to the Convention on the Right’s of the child, associated with the mental health of children and the provisions of the temporary law? 2. Does the temporary law constitute grounds for existential uncertainty, and is it thereby violating the child’s right to mental health? 3. What does the situation look like, related to the mental health of asylum-seeking unaccompanied minors? In relation to the Convention on the Right’s of the Child this temporary law, and the impact of it, is examined. In the discussion it is clear that not only article 24 (the child’s right to health) is fundamental to the question of mental health, but several other articles. The result of this study has shown that the temporary law clearly violates the asylum-seeking unaccompanied child’s right to mental health.

Based on the Migration Board's statistics report, the number of children that has gone missing within a time interval of 4 years (2010-2014) comprises 1331 children in total, of whom 146 are girls and 1185 are boys. A rising interest about what has happened to those children created a fundamental platform for this thesis. By reading Åkerman’s report from 2012, and the book De förlorade barnen: en rapport by Mikkelsen and Wagner (2013) the curiosity grew deeper. The research questions that were established were divided into three parts. Their aim is to examine which organization or public authority has the main responsibility for asylum seeking children that arrives to Sweden by themselves, if the quality of the reception has changed since the municipalities took over the responsibility, and what is/has been publicly done to strengthen the protection concerning the individual child. The aim of this study is to authentically answer the research questions, using a qualitative text analysis and an implement model. The qualitative textual analysis is primarily based on reports from Gunnarsson (2008), the Cabinet Office (2011), and a report from the National Swedish Board of Health and Welfare published in 2012. Further reports and books are used in order to authenticate the legitimacy of the arguments and facts that is accounted for in this thesis. The implementation model that is used is an implement problem shaped by Pressman and Willdawsky. The model is used in order to force the problems that solemnly appear in this thesis. The conclusion establishes that within the distinctive reports it exists different views, but also similarities. The various texts establish that despite a set of rules and regulations there has been a considerable ambiguity among the involved parties, in who holds the greatest responsibility for the asylum-seeking children. Åkerman claims that when the children arrive in Sweden they stand without any form of social safety net, whereas Gunnarsson (2008), the Cabinet Office report (2011) and the National Swedish Board report (2012) refer to the laws (LMA, SoL).