Invisible’ refugee children caught in Europe’s migration red tape

More unaccompanied children arriving in Europe

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Children on the move lack safe routes, emergency support

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Family reunification and guardian networks face delays

By Beatrice Tridimas

TRIESTE, Italy, – As silently as they had arrived, three teenagers slipped away following a member of a smuggling gang, hardly older than themselves, through the shadowed-filled station in the northeastern Italian city of Trieste one cold winter evening.

Less than 100 km from the Italian border with Slovenia, Trieste’s central station was just a pit-stop on the boys’ long journey from their homes in Egypt.

In the square opposite the station, Piazza della Libertà, officials from international and local non-governmental organisations brought the boys, two aged 14 and one 15, pizza and warm coats. There was little more they could do.

Night after night, volunteers join officials at the square to offer food, clothes and first aid to migrants, many of them under 18 and travelling without a parent or legal guardian.

In the first nine months of 2024, arrivals of unaccompanied children to Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain, the main entry points to the European Union, were 8% higher than in the same period of 2023, despite overall arrivals slowing, according to data compiled by the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF.

At the end of September, 22,489 unaccompanied and separated children were present in the five countries.

And as more keep coming, rights groups warn Europe is ill-equipped to help them.

An 18-year-old Afghan, who gave his name as Omid, which means hope, arrived in Trieste late one November night after stowing away on a freight train carrying grain somewhere between Serbia and Italy.

Grain still in his pockets, he sat playing cards in the station with a group of men he had travelled with, as he waited for the first train out of Trieste, the 4:26 a.m. to Venice.

He said he spent 13 days walking through Bulgaria without food and being chased and beaten by police.

“They hit us with sticks, kicks and punches. If you moved, the dogs would bite,” said Omid, who fled Afghanistan and declined to give his full name for safety reasons.

Omid said he had travelled most of his journey on foot with 23 other Afghans. He said he did not have a future in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.

Between July and September, the International Rescue Committee helped an average of 11 newly arrived unaccompanied children every day in Trieste. More than half were boys from Afghanistan.

Since January 2022, 83% of the children the IRC has helped were Afghans.

When they turn up, the exhausted teenagers need practical help – new shoes, socks, first aid for their bloodied and blistered feet, medication for colds, and a place to sleep, shower and charge their phones.

Most only stay a night or two before moving on.

With nowhere to stay, many sleep on the streets under emergency blankets, without access to toilets and at risk of having their phones snatched or falling prey to smugglers looking to exploit them.

“They are invisible to everyone apart from us,” said Alessandro Papes, manager of the IRC’s Trieste operations.

At 1 a.m., the train station closed and Omid and his group sought shelter from the icy wind in a nearby bus garage, grateful for the shoes, coats and blankets they had been given.

NUMBERS ON THE RISE

Violence, conflict and human rights violations have contributed to the dramatic increase in the number of children forcibly displaced worldwide since 2020, according to UNICEF.

In Europe, 46,500 unaccompanied or separated children applied for asylum in 2023, more than double the number in 2020.

According to EU data, the most first-time applicants for international protection among unaccompanied minors were from Syria, followed by Afghanistan. In 2023, 13,570 unaccompanied Syrian children applied for international protection.

Several European countries put asylum applications from Syrians on hold following the fall of President Bashar al-Assad in December. Children and adults can still apply, but their applications will not be examined until the situation becomes clearer.

The true number of children travelling alone through Europe is unknown, as many do not register when they arrive and stay on the move.

In Italy, local authorities are only responsible for managing child arrivals if the children choose to stay, said Papes.

Unaccompanied children who register with the police are accommodated in official reception centres. But children who do not register miss out on state-run services and access to their rights.

The IRC is raising money to open an emergency shelter in Trieste specifically for unaccompanied minors who are transiting.

Often, children are travelling to a country where they have friends or family, or do not want to be separated from the groups they came with, according to the IRC.

In the Piazza della Libertà, volunteers and officials from the IRC, Save the Children and the U.N.’s refugee agency UNHCR provide children with information about their rights and the asylum process, or about how to purchase and validate train tickets for the next stage of their journey.

Of the 6,501 unaccompanied minors the IRC has helped in Trieste since 2022, 84% said they planned to move on.

“They always have sufficient motivation to reach other countries, so it’s impossible to keep them , even if it would be better for some of them,” Papes said.

NO SAFE ROUTES

Children are often exposed to violence and danger or exploited by smugglers on journeys to Europe that sometimes take years, said Terry Smith from the European Guardianship Network, an organisation working to improve the services for unaccompanied minors in the EU.

Children on the move need legal routes, said Smith.

“We can’t do that because the systems don’t exist.”

Children who apply for asylum in the first country they arrive in can legally transit to another member state where they may have family by requesting for their application to be transferred to that country.

But strict legal considerations and inconsistent standards between countries make it a long, complex and inefficient process.

Statistics from the European Council on Refugees and Exiles show that in 2022 only 2% of transfer requests were based on family reunification.

In Greece, where arrivals of unaccompanied children have doubled compared to last year, deadlines for applications are often missed because other EU states require time-intensive DNA tests to prove familial relationships, said Lora Pappa, director of METAdrasi, a Greek NGO that works with migrants and refugees.

DOUBTS ABOUT NEW PACT

A new European migration pact will allow applications for family reunification made by unaccompanied children to be submitted after official deadlines.

But in November, IRC and 28 other humanitarian organisations signed a joint policy brief calling for stronger safeguarding measures for children in the pact, and the resources to back them up.

The Pact on Migration and Asylum will apply from 2026. Member states must submit plans for implementing the rules by Dec. 12.

The pact aims to reinforce solidarity between EU members, as irregular migration becomes an increasingly fraught political issue and states trade responsibility for arrivals.

It includes measures to strengthen screening procedures and prevent secondary movement between countries to help establish which countries are responsible for handling applications.

But the rights groups said governments need to back up measures with funding and training to ensure children’s vulnerabilities are not overlooked during screening and processing at borders.

“The pact is a missed opportunity when it comes to child protection,” said Laetitia Van der Vennet, an expert at the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, a signatory of the policy briefing.

The pact requires a permanent guardian to be appointed to an unaccompanied minor within 15 days of an asylum application being made in an EU member state.

“Guardianship services are understaffed, underfunded and don’t have sufficient people to be able to cater to the needs of minors. Without changing this, it’s going to be impossible to respect ,” said Eleonora Testi, a legal expert at ECRE.

‘WHAT SHOULD I DO?’

Ahmad, a 17-year-old from Afghanistan, said he has been waiting more than six months to be assigned a guardian before he could pursue his asylum application.

Living in a reception centre for unaccompanied minors in Trieste, he comes to a day centre for local homeless people run by church charity San Martino Al Campo and used by the IRC to support migrants, to spend his time with older friends.

Ahmad’s 18th birthday is fast approaching and he is afraid he will have to leave the reception centre.

“I have just two-and-a-half months, what should I do?” asked Ahmad, who preferred to be identified by a pseudonym. “Maybe they’ll kick me out and I’ll sleep in the road.”

Ahmad had hoped that if he was granted asylum, his father could join him from Afghanistan.

Carla Garlatti, Italy’s independent authority for children and adolescents, has been calling for more guardians to volunteer since 2023.

She said administrative procedures should be faster and guardians should be trained to help children integrate.

“For minors who arrive in Italy without reference adults, the figure of the voluntary guardian represents a fundamental resource in the reception and integration process,” Garlatti said in an email.

The authority has received 4 million euros from the EU’s Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund for two programmes dedicated to promoting foster care for unaccompanied minors and supporting volunteer guardians to perform their roles.

‘MORE WORK NEEDED’

Rights groups are also worried that the new migration pact could increase children’s risk of detention at borders.

Unaccompanied minors who are flagged as a security threat would be subject to a new border procedure that would mean they are held at borders during the application process, potentially in detention-like conditions and without access to proper support.

“Detention should only be used as a last resort, for the shortest time possible, and never in prison accommodation or any other facility destined for law enforcement purposes,” said a spokesperson from the European Commission Department for Migration and Home Affairs.

Minors below the age of 12 or with special reception needs must be excluded from these procedures, the spokesperson said.

“We want to see more safeguards making sure that children are not in closed facilities, and have access to protection systems and education while they go through any kind of border procedure,” said Anna Knutzen, a child protection expert at UNICEF.

Member states should be very specific in their definitions of terms when enacting their own laws to avoid blanket applications of rules, Knutzen added.

Knutzen said more work was needed to improve conditions in reception centres and ensure children can access legal pathways.

Meanwhile, without the support they need, children and teenagers continue to face difficult choices.

Ahmad said he had nothing in Italy and wanted to move on. He said it would cost 3,000 euros to get to Britain and he would have to risk his life crossing the channel.

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.