Number of unaccompanied child migrants in Europe has doubled, says UN

A migrant boy breaks through the fence at a temporary camp for migrants on June 5, 2016. Angelos Tzortzinis / Agence France-Presse

GENEVA // The number of unaccompanied children making the notoriously dangerous Mediterranean crossing aboard unseaworthy boats has more than doubled this year, the UN children’s agency said in a new report released on Tuesday.

Entitled “Danger every step of the way”, the Unicef report said nine out of every 10 children arriving in Italy were unaccompanied minors. More than 7,000 of them had arrived in the first five months of the year. Why the numbers have risen so much is unexplained but it is clear that children who have travelled alone or become separated from their families are at particular risk of abuse and exploitation — not least by the people-smugglers they rely on to get to Europe, says Unicef.

“Just about every child who arrives on the Italian island of Lampedusa or in Sicily has a harrowing story to tell,” the report said.

Both boys and girls are subjected to sexual violence and forced into prostitution. Some of the girls are pregnant by the time they arrive on European shores.

“During the crossing, several people fell overboard and drowned, and others inside the boat fainted and died. I was even sitting down with dead bodies and I was scared,” 17-year-old Nigerian orphan Peace told the Unicef investigators. She had fled Nigeria to escape an arranged marriage to a 40-year-old. but regretted running away.

“I wish my friend had told me this is how difficult it is. I would have continued suffering in Nigeria,” she said.

Aimamo, 16, recounted how he and his twin lives were treated like slaves at the farm in Libya where they worked for two months to raise the money to pay smugglers. “If you try to run they shoot you and you die. If you stop working, they beat you. It was just like the slave trade,” he said.

The growing number of Nigerian women and girls leaving Libya bound for Italy is of special concern. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates 80 per cent of them are victims of trafficking.

Last year, 3.770 people, many of them children, died trying to cross the Mediterranean, according to IOM figures. This year the number has already reached 2,859.

Nor does the danger end for unaccompanied children when they reach Europe, says the Unicef report. They rarely register themselves with any official body, choosing to make their own way onward, making them easy pretty for criminal gangs.

Unicef is calling for a coordinated system to help such children. “Every country — those the children leave, those they cross and those in which they seek asylum — has an obligation to establish protection systems focused on the risks that unaccompanied children face,.” said Marie-Pierre Poirier, Unicef’s special coordinator for Europe’s migrant crisis. “They have endured war, persecution, deprivation and terrible journeys. Even when they have reached the relative safety of their destination, they still need protection, education “

There are currently 235,000 refugees and migrants in Libya and some 956,000 in the Sahel countries, and “many — if not most — of them” are hoping to make their way to Europe, the Unicef report said. But Ms Poirier added, “We should never forget that children on the move are first and foremost children, who bear no responsibility for their plight, and have every right to a better life,.”

* Agence France-Presse