Young migrants victims of abuse

3.5m don’t attend school

BRUSSELS, Sept 12, (Agencies): More than three-quarters of children and young adults trying to migrate to Europe are victims of torture, rape and other abuse on the dangerous journey, UN officials said Tuesday, warning against “cynicism” over the repeated tragedies.

Officials from children’s rights agency UNICEF and the International Organisation for Migration said young migrants coming from sub-Saharan Africa via the Mediterranean were particularly at risk from abuse, likely due to racism.

“They use words like torture, beating, killing, slavery, trafficking, rape, not like abstract concepts, not something they have to write a report for school, but as their reality,” UNICEF Brussels director Sandie Blanchet told a press conference.

“Just imagine for a second your own kids going through that,” Blanchet said after UNICEF and IOM published a report based on extensive interviews.

The report said 77 percent of children and young people trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe had suffered “direct experiences of abuse, exploitation and practices which may amount to human trafficking.”

Those from sub-Saharan Africa are far more likely to experience such suffering than those from elsewhere, it said. “Racism is likely a major underlying factor behind this discrepancy.”

The report surveyed 22,000 migrants and refugees including 11,000 children and young people.

Eugenio Ambrosi, IOM’s director for the EU, Norway and Switzerland, called on officials to deploy a better border management system with trained experts to care for children rather treat them as “a potential enemy crossing illegally our sacred border.”

Ambrosi also warned against growing “cynicism” over repeated stories of child migrant suffering: “We have to continue to be shocked and sad and angry at the violation we see.”

Meanwhile, more than half the world’s refugee children – some 3.5 million altogether – do not attend school, the UN refugee agency said Tuesday, urging greater and steadier funding for their education.

“Some 3.5 million didn’t get a single day” of school last year from among the 6.4 million children aged between five and 17 who were under the care of the UNHCR last year, the agency said in a report.

It was only a slight improvement over the previous year, when the figure was 3.7 million, said the report titled “Left Behind: Refugee Education in Crisis”.

Blanchet

Refugees

“The education of these young refugees is crucial to the peaceful and sustainable development of the places that have welcomed them, and to the future prosperity of their own countries,” UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said in the report.

The agency urged donor governments to increase investment in refugee education and to commit to consistent funding “from the emergency phase onwards”.

Half of the 17.2 million refugees under the care of the UNHCR are children, Grandi said.

“Compared to other children and youth around the world, the gap in opportunity for the 6.4 million school-age refugees under UNHCR’s mandate is growing ever wider,” he said.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged Hungary to quickly implement a ruling by the European Union’s top court that member states must take in a share of refugees who reach the continent.

In its ruling last week, the court dismissed complaints by Slovakia and Hungary over the mandatory quotas introduced in 2015 to relocate asylum seekers from Greece and Italy.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday his government would not change its anti-immigration stance.

In an interview with Berliner Zeitung newspaper to be published on Tuesday, Merkel insisted that Hungary had to implement the court ruling.

“It’s unacceptable that a government says a ruling of the European Court of Justice does not interest them,” Merkel said, according to a preview published by the daily late on Monday.

Asked whether this meant that Hungary had to leave the EU, Merkel said: “This means that a very fundamental question of Europe is being touched – because for me, Europe is an area of the rule of law. We will have to talk about this at the European Council in October.”