Odontological Age Estimation of Living Persons with Special Reference to Young Asylum Seekers: The Norwegian Approach

The age of a living person which is defined as the time elapsed since the date of birth may sometimes be queried for various reasons. In Norway, this may happen with children adopted from abroad and refugees who arrived without identification papers. It is the civil rights of a person in a modern society to have a correct date of birth. Unaccompanied asylum seekers under the age of 18 years have the right to be treated as children or minors. He cannot so easily be denied access nor returned and the likelihood of a permanent permission to stay increases. It is therefore tempting for young asylum seekers to pretend to be younger than they really are. In the latter years several young asylum seekers have arrived in Norway claiming to be younger than 18 years of age, but cannot produce official papers to verify this. In the year 2002 approximately 900 people claiming to be minors arrived in Norway and the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) wanted to have the age verified from biological markers as were already done in Denmark, Sweden and Germany. Contact was established with the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Oslo and a project for estimation the age based on teeth started. At the same time initiation was made to take radiographs of the hand and wrist bones and have age assessments from these performed at one of the university hospitals in Oslo. Independent reports were submitted to UDI from both institutions. The aim of this paper is to show the technique we use at the Faculty of Dentistry in Oslo including some examples.