Unaccompanied refugee and migrant children in urgent need of protection, warns UNICEF
GENEVA, 6 May 2016 –– UNICEF today called for urgent measures to protect unaccompanied refugee and migrant children in Europe – who are at serious risk of abuse, trafficking and exploitation and whose number reached a record of more than 95,000 last year.
Interpol estimates one in nine unaccompanied refugee and migrant children is unaccounted for or missing, but the figures are believed to be far higher. In Slovenia, for example, more than 80 per cent of unaccompanied children went missing from reception centres, while in Sweden up to 10 children are reported missing each week. Earlier this year 4,700 unaccompanied children were recorded as missing in Germany.
“Unaccompanied children are falling between the cracks. Many simply run away from reception centres to join their extended families while they wait, or because they have not had a full hearing to determine their best interests or have not had their rights explained to them,” said Marie Pierre Poirier, UNICEF Special Coordinator for the Refugee and Migrant crisis in Europe.
The call came as European Union member states begin negotiations aimed at creating a fairer and more sustainable system for dealing with migrants and refugees. UNICEF stressed that any decision affecting children should be based on the best interests of the child, and called for this principle to be strengthened in the Dublin Regulation currently under discussion.
UNICEF also stressed the importance of speeding up decisions involving a child, pointing out that children currently have to wait up to 11 months between registration and transfer to a country that has agreed to accept them. UNICEF calls for shortening the waiting period to no longer than 90 days, immediate appointment of a guardian, and accelerated family reunification. This is key to protecting unaccompanied children and preventing them from going missing.
Latest available figures show that 96,500 unaccompanied children applied for asylum in Europe in 2015 – some 20 per cent of the total number of children who sought asylum.
The majority were teenage boys from Afghanistan, while Syrians were the second largest group. A significant number were under 14 years of age, and travelling alone without the protection of adult family members or guardians.
In some countries, unaccompanied children made up more than half of all children who arrived in 2015. In Sweden, lone adolescents accounted for 50 percent of all child refugees, while in Italy 12,300 unaccompanied children arrived and a further 4,000 were with their families.
